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One Generation to 
Another 


By |y 
HARRIS ELLIOTT KIRK, D.D. 


Minister, Franklin Street Tred bint 
urch, Baltimore, 


Author of “The Consuming Fire,” ete. 





New Yor CHICAGO — 


Fleming H. Revell Company 


LoNDON AND EDINBURGH 


Copyright, 1924, by 
FLEMING H. REVELL COMPANY 


Printed in the United States of America 


New York: 158 Fifth Avenue 
Chicago: 17 North Wabash Ave. 
London: 21 Paternoster Square 
Edinburgh: 75 Princes Street 


To Harris, Louise and Helen, 
Three Delightful Children. 





Preface 


\ N [ITHOUT faith in Jesus Christ, the reading of 


the Old Testament is most depressing; for it 

becomes a book without a purpose, and a his- 
tory without a consummation. What happens to the 
story without faith in Jesus, the Jews have told us in 
the frigid legalism of the Pharisee or the artificial writ- 
ings of apocalyptic dreamers. 

But if read as a part of the revelation of Jesus Christ 
it becomes one of the most fascinating books in the 
world. Is it hazardous to say that from this point of 
view it is more interesting than the New Testament? 
In the one we seem to be in a church, silenced by the 
awful sense of the Divine Presence; but in the other 
we are out under the stars, in vast open spaces, and 
with people of like passions with ourselves. It is the 
book par excellence of the spiritual imagination, the 
playground of the enfranchised soul. At least I have 
always found it so, and offer these studies as modest 
examples of its unfailing and appealing attraction. 

These addresses for the most part have appeared in 
the Record of Christian Work, The Biblical Review, 
and The Christian World Pulpit, of London. For kind 
permission to reproduce them my thanks are due the 
editors. I am also under particular obligation to Mr. 
G. Pinkney Simpson for assistance in preparation of 
the manuscript. 

The Manse, 


Franklin Street Presbyterian Church, 
Baltimore, Md. 


7 


ir 


er 


be 





IIT. 


Contents 


PART 1 


THE MAKING OF A GREAT 
TRADITION 


. RELIGION IN ‘I'wo WorLDS 
. ONE GENERATION To ANOTHER 
THE WITHERED GOURD OR THE Deine 


WorRLD 


PART II 
THE EDUCATION OF MOSES 


. Tue DISCIPLINE OF THE DESERT . 
. THE GLoryY IN THE DESERT . 
. Tur DANGER OF THE DESERT 
. THE PowER OF THE DESERT . 
. THE DEATH IN THE DESERT . 


PART III 


PROPHETIC STRAINS OF OLD. 
EXPERIENCES 


. RELIGION WITH RESERVATIONS . 

. THE PROPHET AND THE PARASITE 

. JEREMIAH’s COMPLAINING PLACE 

. INVESTMENTS IN THE PROMISES OF Gop 
. THE PropHET OF VISIONS AND DREAMS 
. Tur HicHEr Ecorism 

. Tue Captivity oF Jos 


9. 


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| PART I 
THE MAKING OF A GREAT TRADITION 





I 
RELIGION IN TWO WORLDS 


“ Jacob went his way, and the angels of God met him.” 
—GENEsIs 32: 1. 


ACOB’S story is easily remembered for two rea- 
J sons. In the first place his life had been split in 
two by a great experience. Like Paul, and 
Augustine and Luther, his career was a contrast be- 
tween before and after. The Jabbok experience was 
the outstanding epoch of his life. In the second place 
the critical phases are associated with places: with 
Bethel, Haran, the Jabbok, Shechem and Bethel again. 
Follow him around this circle and you get to know him 
thoroughly. 

Jacob’s story is an example of the Divine re-making 
of a self-made man. As is usual with such men, his 
greatest misfortunes came from early successes. His 
first venture was his bargain with Esau. That trans- 
action revealed two extraordinary capacities. In the 
first place it taught Jacob that he actually believed in a 
spiritual and intangible world. He wanted the birth- 
right because it was a symbol of power in a spiritual 
domain. He was willing to make sacrifices to obtain it 
because it assured him compensations in the future. In 
the second place the ease with which he obtained it 
revealed his power over men. He enjoyed playing with 
Esau; and why should he not? That is what E'saus are 
for. The discovery of these capacities, so early in his 


13 


14 MAKING OF A GREAT TRADITION 


career, led to a struggle from which he was not released 
until he was an old and broken man. The conflict was 
manifest from the beginning. Jacob was not one of 
those who take up an adventure on impulse, and aban- 
don it so soon as it becomes difficult; but once to have 
chosen his objectives he would press towards them with 
a relentless enthusiasm which nothing could alter. This 
resolute man never let go of an enterprise, until he 
obtained what he wanted. 

Of course he had to leave home, and his mother sent 
him on a vacation into Haran, and on his way he had 
his first Bethel experience. There is something para- 
doxical about this. Here is a man who should have 
been very much ashamed of himself; at least it would 
have been becoming to have suffered from insomnia, 
but instead of worrying about his sins, he falls asleep 
like an innocent child and dreams of angels! The rea- 
son is that he was young; and the young can pass from 
one stage of experience to another without a sense of 
contradiction. It is only after maturity that men find 
it impossible. Jacob’s dream indicates that in spite of 
his misdeeds the spiritual aspect of his character was 
still in the ascendant. His shameful deception of Esau 
was incidental. : 

His stay in Haran, at first intended to be brief, 
lengthened out into a period of twenty years; during 
which he showed himself patient, industrious, and 
obedient. Disappointment did not depress him, even 
when he had to wait fourteen years for the woman that 
he loved. He was successful from the outset; every- 
thing he touched turned into money. He began to get 
rich, and as his fortune grew, the master passion to ccn- 
trol this world became dominant. He did not abandon 
his spiritual ambitions, but deferred their realisation to’ 


RELIGION IN TWO WORLDS 15 


a more convenient season. First he proposes to accu- 
mulate a competence, and then, richly laden with this 
world’s goods, he will return to the old land and take 
up the role of religious leader. As his wealth increased 
he came to love it, not for its own sake, but as the 
symbol of power. He devised all kinds of arts and 
wiles for adding to his income; and appears to have had 
no misgivings whatever about his future. Take him, 
all in all, he was a resourceful man with the acquisitive 
faculty strongly developed. 

At this point a bit of humour comes into the story. 
Jacob made a great impression on his father-in-law. 
Laban was an Old Testament By-Ends. He did not 
care for religion himself, but he liked to have a reli- 
gious man in his family. When Jacob expressed a 
wish to return home, Laban remonstrated after this 
fashion: “Tarry with me, yet awhile, for I have 
learned from experience that God blesses everyone who 
has any dealings with you.” Curiously enough, Laban 
shrewdly suspected that Jacob was systematically de- 
frauding him, but for the life of him he could find 
nothing tangible upon which to base a complaint. 
When, however, after a particularly mendacious trans- 
action, Jacob set out on his return, Laban discovered 
the trick and pursued him, saying, “I have got him 
now, and I propose to make him rue it.” But Jacob 
greeted him with such protestations of injured inno- 
cence that the old fellow was made to feel that he had 
done something highly indelicate, and after a profuse 
apology sent him away with his blessing: “ May the 
Lord watch between thee and me when we are absent 
one from the other.” 

Had Jacob lived in our day he would have been a 
pragmatist, because the pragmatist believes that the. 


16 MAKING OF A GREAT TRADITION 


true is the useful. If a lie, for instance, is useful, that 
is, useful to you, then it is all right. If you are a 
philosopher there is no harm in it at all, but if you have 
no philosophy then, of course, you are just an ordinary 
liar and sinner. Jacob was a pragmatist and Laban 
soon realised that he was no match for a philosopher. 
Jacob is the kind of man we get to know in modern 
business. Had he lived in our day he would have been 
a captain of industry, a trust magnate; active, if he 
chose, in politics, but always and everywhere successful. 

His homecoming fitted in with the insurgent de- 
mands of his spiritual ambitions. He had reached the 
place where his problem was not how to make money, 
but how to use it to the best advamtage. Other inter- 
ests demanded attention, chiefly the one which although 
long deferred, had never been forgotten. I mean his 
spiritual ambitions. He is returning to the old land 
to assume the role of religious leader; he is going to 
realise on his first investment and gain control of the 
spiritual inheritance. He is returning not as a prodigal 
ready to make compensation for his wrong doing, to do 
what he can to adjust his differences with Esau. Hay- 
ing the assurance and arrogance of the self-made man, 
he betrays no misgivings whatsoever. And this is the - 
way he reasons: “ Managing birthrights, and control- 
ling spiritual movements are precisely the same as 
growing flocks and herds. It ought to be as easy to 
realise on the spiritual investment, as it has been to 
manipulate such small people as Esau and Laban.” 
Worldly success had demonstrated the value of certain 
principles of action; why then should they not be as 
useful in one sphere as in another? This is a very 
popular view today. There are many successful men 
who imagine that because they can make a tin pan 


RELIGION IN TWO WORLDS 17 


better than their neighbours, they are quite capable of 
directing a church. Such men as a rule are self-made, 
half-educated and profoundly ignorant of the problems 
they seek to solve. We know that these modern Jacobs 
are mistaken, but we also know that it will take some- 
thing more than human to make them realise it. 

This was Jacob’s state of mind. He sees no contra- 
diction between the spiritual estate he now proposes to 
manage, and the principles and moral compromises that 
have led to his success. He is prepared to give liber- 
‘ally, shall we say to the causes of religion, but not one 
penny for restitution. He will not confess that he has 
wronged his brother. He does not propose to tolerate 
any criticism of his business methods, or admit any 
want of capacity for spiritual leadership. If conscience 
should trouble him, he could silence it by saying: “ Mv 
present successes have cancelled past obligations.” 

This immense self-satisfaction enabled him to greet 
without surprise the escort of angels who met him on 
the way. Why should not such a man be welcomed 
by a heavenly reception committee? He did not learn 
until later that the angels had been sent to bring him 
to the judgment seat of God. 

We are here on familiar ground. I recently came 
upon a book entitled: 4 Memorandum of the Conduct 
of Umiversities by Business Men, and I could wish that 
someone would write another entitled A Memorandum 
of the Conduct of Churches by Business Men. For the 
greatest single asset of and most formidable hindrance 
to the organised Church today is the influence of busi- 
ness men of the Jacob type on the conduct of religious 
enterprises. These self-made, arrogant, half-educated, 
successful men who imagine that the only methods 
needed for the direction of the spiritual estate are those 


18 MAKING OF A GREAT TRADITION 


proved profitable in the world of business are doing 
more than any other influence to retard the progress 
of religion in these times. ‘They are Jacobs who have 
had the misfortune to escape a Jabbok experience. 
Jacob is returning to assume the role of religious 
director. He is going to reorganise the Church, to put 
religion on the map, or to borrow the slogan of ecclesi- 
astical Babbitts to show the ministers how to “ sell 
religion.” He is going to do many up-to-date things 
in the land; branch out socially, enter politics, reform 
morals, adjust differences between God’s people and 
their heathen neighbours, and generally show everyone 
how to be successful on strictly modern lines. And had 
he lived in our day he would have been surrounded 
with an everlasting clatter of typewriters, filing cabi- 
nets, dictaphones, adding-machines and all the rest of 
the mind-distracting devices of modern business. 

God needs this man, has always needed him. His 
experience is valuable, not only for what it may become, 
but just now as a shining example of “ how not to do 
it.’ But before Jacob can be of any use he must be 
smashed to bits and remoulded on an entirely different 
scale. The average man, however, can do nothing with 
him. You cannot control him by organisation because — 
he can beat you at it. You cannot argue with him be- 
cause he is impervious to reason. You cannot frighten 
him with spiritual reality because he knows nothing 
about it; neither can you advise him because he will 
not stand still long enough to know what you are about. 
The only thing to do is to hand him over to the strong 
arm of Providence. The angels were there to see to » 
that, and it is to be regretted that they do not visit us 
oftener; for the modern Church is full of men who 
need this sort of discipline. Still, most of them get it in 


RELIGION IN TWO WORLDS 19 


some fashion before they are an out of the “ Roaring 
Forties.” 

Go into any gathering of middle-aged business men, 
for choice a luncheon club, and what do you see? 
There they are, fat, baldheaded, prosperous and dis- 
contented ; exploited by clever phrase makers, holding 
their slender stock of worldly wisdom in pre-digested 
slogans or what they have of religious belief in shop- 
worn shibboleths; puzzled as to their terminal facilities 
and yet vaguely wondering what has happened to their 
program of life. These men have great capacities, are 
potentially on the side of religion, but until their intel- 
lectual outlook is altered by some serious form of spir- 
itual discipline they are apt to hinder rather than to 
help the churches they support. What they should pray 
for is a Jabbok experience. 

Jacob reaches the Jabbok, which formed a critical 
stage in his life. The Jabbok was an insignificant little 
brook; its importance lay in the fact that it was the 
border line of the Holy Land. He was at the very 
threshold of his religious career, the stage of his later 
adventures and exploits.. And as soon as he reached 
this line this was his thought, “ What are the forces 
prepared to dispute with me the carrying out of my 
mission?” They were all reduced to one—Esau. 
Esau had been over there for twenty years, growing in 
a fashion as Jacob had grown. He had probably been 
nourishing his grudge. What about Esau and his dis- 
position? ‘Was he going to dispute his entrance into 
the land? If so, how could he make him his friend, or, 
at any rate, how could he render him harmless? He 
sent scouts to view the land, and they came back with 
terror-stricken faces with the news, “ We saw Esau out 
there with four hundred men.” Four hundred men 


20 MAKING OF A GREAT TRADITION 


meant clubs and bludgeons and broken heads, and that 
was something Jacob did not want to be mixed up in. 

Now see what Jacob did. He prayed. The man 
had a gift at prayer. And that prayer of Jacob is one 
of the greatest bargaining arguments in the Bible. He 
reminds the Almighty of the women and the children, 
the little babies. He does not say, “O Lord, I am 
responsible for exposing these women and children and 
babies to this man’s anger ’’; but reminds the Lord that 
He must especially remember that there are children 
and women and babies in that crowd, and therefore He 
must take care of them, and poor humble Jacob, who 
is just nothing but a worm, you know. But all 
the time the man’s mind is not so much on what 
God is going to do as what he himself is going to do 
with Esau. | 

Then comes his idea. He divides his group into two 
bands, saying, “If they get hold of one, the other will 
escape.” Then he sat down and reasoned thus—and 
this is the way the strong man enjoys manipulating 
small personalities :—‘‘ Small men like Esau are sus- 
ceptible to two very powerful temptations : they are vain 
and they are avaricious. Appeal to a little man’s vanity 
and avarice, and in most cases you can do anything you 
want with him’’; which is perfectly true. So what 
does he do? He picks out of his flocks and herds the 
choicest types of every animal he has. He divides them 
up into a number of bands. WHere they are, fat and 
sleek and well fed; highly favoured and most appealing, 
they must have been. He puts at the head of each a 
group of men, and says, “ String yourselves out along 
the road; keep a sufficient distance between each group 
so that only one can be seen at a time.”’ At the head of 
each he places ambassadors, who will come into the 


RELIGION IN TWO WORLDS 21 


presence of Esau, and when Esau says with an excla- 
mation of surprise, “ What does all this mean?” they 
are to say, “ These are for my lord Esau from his 
servant Jacob, who is coming along just behind.” 

Imagine the scene. Here is Esau with his band of 
four hundred men. He has been nourishing a grudge 
against Jacob for twenty years; he is just as poor, 
tattered and hungry as ever. He has not got along at 
all. It is the same old shiftless Esau. And there come 
up over the brow of the hill the droves of cattle. Esau 
has never seen anything like that in his flocks and 
herds. He has never had as many cattle in all his life. 
And he asks, “Where in the world do you come 
from?” And they reply, “It is for my lord Esau, 
from his servant Jacob, who is just behind.” And 
before he can get over the surprise of that, another 
drove comes over the hill, then another and still an- 
other. Well, it was not in that sort of human nature 
to resist such an attack. 

Jacob never took the trouble to inquire how the thing 
was going to work. He knew it would work abso- 
lutely. So what does he do? The first thing as the 
shadows lengthen into the night, is to send his women 
and children across the Jabbok into the disputed terri- 
tory. Then he sits down beside the brook: the night 
comes and the stars and the mystic charm of the dumb 
yet speaking silence that only the desert knows. He 
sits there and enjoys the fruits of victory before the 
battle is fought. 

You know the story, that is, the Divine side; but 
every Divine story has a human side. If God had 
struggled with Esau until the end of time, Esau never 
would have known what it meant. He would have mis- 
taken God for a ghost. But Jacob was a different per- 


22 MAKING OF A GREAT TRADITION 


sonality. There was a subtle change taking place in 
the man’s conception of life, even while he sat trying 
to enjoy his victory; because of that, he saw what God 
meant in the struggle. 

The first thing that happens is this: He had the ex- 
perience that Isaiah mentions in a beautiful but un- 
familiar verse, “The twilight that I desired hath been 
turned into trembling unto me.” ‘There was an Ori- 
ental, who looked forward through the heat and burden 
of the day to the twilight hour, when he could go to 
-the roof of his house and sit in the deepening shadows 
and be alone and meditate, as we say, the pleasant 
thoughts. He desired the twilight hour, yet when the 
hour came it was turned into trembling unto him, 
because the thoughts were of an unpleasant character. 
Now that is what happened to Jacob. I can imagine 
him sitting there watching the stars wheeling in their 
courses, and thinking of great schemes, and how he 


was going to grasp this higher and this better thing he 


had been dreaming of for twenty years, and what it was 
going to mean to his family; thinking of his social 
position, the satisfaction of his religious aspirations, 
the realisation of his earthly ambition. And then 


gradually there began to bite into his soul the malady — 


of critical self-reflection ; and he was overcome, for the 
first time, by a nameless dread of existence. He found 


himself unsure. He began to doubt his conception of: 


life. He reasoned: “I have flocks and herds and 
earthly position, but after all is this the prize of life? 
These things have no permanence; they are but parts 
of the phantasmagoria of the world, the changing and 
shifting scenery of the external; they have no signifi- 
cance for my inner life. Perhaps, after all, with my 


scheming and bargaining I have missed the big thing.” 


CS 


RELIGION IN TWO WORLDS 23 


And then he began to feel self-accusation. He began 
to feel that somehow or other his whole past was 
crooked, and that his success was the visible symbol of 
godlessness, his own unfitness to live. 

You cannot always say to the soul what the fool in 
the parable said, “ Soul, thou hast much goods laid up 
for many years; take thine ease.” And so it was with 
Jacob. He could not be content with that feeling. His 
soul could not eat flocks and herds; it wanted something 
else. He did not know what, but as he thought of it 
he began to feel the emptiness and bitterness of success ; 
and then came self-accusation, the strange inaptitude 
of this hitherto competent nature. But he said to him- 
self : “ This is morbid; this is folly. I will shake it off.” 

You can see him rising, girding up his loins, grasp- 
ing his staff, and plunging into the brook. Then down 
- out of the shadow land above him came the great arm 
of the unseen guardian of the land, and there you see 
him struggling and fighting. If he had been weak he 
would have quit right there, but he struggled and strug- 
gled until the dawn; and then there broke into his con- 
sciousness a feeling that “This is God. This is the 
meaning of the birthright. Who would have thought 
it? That thing I cheated Esau out of. This thing that 
grips and punches and crushes and breaks and disap- 
points and shakes me all to bits, this thing is God that 
has hold of me. Oh, oh! Life, how bitter thou art! 
How disappointing thou art! Thou art to me a decep- 
tion anda snare! The birthright! And those angels, 
those angels that I thought were taking me to my 
throne, were leading me to the judgment seat of God. 
What a life it is!” 

Then came the feeling: “ I will see this thing through 
to the bitter end. If this is God, I will find out Who 


24 MAKING OF A GREAT TRADITION 


He is, what He is, and I will know it to the depths of 
its meaning.” And he said: “I will not let thee go 
until thou dost tell me thy name. What is thy nature? 
What is the nature of my life in relation to thine? ‘I 
will not let thee go, except thou bless me.’ ”’ 

It is an unusual lack of insight, I think, to regard 
that as an illustration of prayer. It is not prayer at all. 
It is something intensely elementary. It is one of those 
great struggles of a strong, first-class nature to get at 
the secret of existence. He would go to the bottom of 
the thing, and he knew that he could not do it without 
loss. And when he found himself, having learned the 
secret by name, falling out of the arms of his antagon- 
ist, his thigh was broken, and he was a maimed man. 
for the rest of his life. 

Now stand for a moment with his family. They 
had been out all night; and the women had had trying 
thoughts. They did not know what would happen. 
“Where is Jacob? Where is the master?” said the 
servants. And they look down the road, and see this 
prematurely old man. His beard is-splotched with 
slime; his garments are dirty and trailing in the dust; 
his staff 4 is broken, and the man is dragging his leg as if 
it were paralysed. Can this be Jacob? 

How I have wished for a Jabbok experience for the 
splendid, successful men who are running our churches; 
only unhappily they travel now by airplane over the 
Jabbok, and ofttimes miss the guardian of the land. | 

How did this thing influence Jacob’s subsequent life? 
One would think that a man who had had an experience 
like that would never have any more struggles, but 
would go on from glory to glory and from star to star. 
But that is not the way life works at all. A vision of 
God never does away with the necessity of struggle to - 


RELIGION IN TWO WORLDS 25 


realise it. And Jacob’s experience was the beginning 
of a series of struggles more intense, and in some re- 
spects more disappointing, than anything he had ever 
had in his life. 

Jacob said, “I am going to Bethel.” And as he 
said it he heard God saying the same thing. Now 
what did he mean by that? It is this: He wanted to 
visit the haunts of early vision. He wanted to begin 
his new life in the place where he had first known its 
sanctities. Cowper confesses this natural longing: 


“Where is the blessedness I knew 
When first I saw the Lord?” 


He started for Bethel, but as he went through 
Shechem its fertile fields aroused his businesslike 
capacity, and he said: “Look at these fields. Was 
there ever anything like this in Haran? How the sheep 
will grow out here! We need not be in such a great 
hurry to get to Bethel. We have plenty of time. We 
will just stop here awhile and graze our flocks and 
herds.” There you are. The influence of a lifetime 
habit cannot be suspended by a single religious experi- 
ence. God does not treat us in that easy way. Now 
you see the old bargaining Jacob coming to the front 
temporarily. Jabbok dropped into the background 
again. They settled down, grazed their herds; and of 
course they were successful. But there were other 
things in Shechem and that vicinity that were quite 
different from anything Jacob had met with. His 
children were getting to the years where they begin 
to be interested in the world, and the world begins 
to take part in their education. And Dinah had a 
disastrous social experience that involved Jacob in a 


26 MAKING OF A GREAT TRADITION 


broken heart and in a bitter struggle with the inhabit- 
ants of the land. 

That is one of the bitterest things in modern life. 
When I see successful men moving heaven and earth 
to make money, and putting further off into the future 
their religious responsibility, allowing family worship 
and private prayer to go out of their homes, and even 
letting the blessing go; and these handsome, delicately 
nurtured women moving heaven and earth to give their 
daughters a social career, and thinking more of that 
than of their souls’ salvation, dwelling in Shechem in 
the tents of wickedness, and all the time saying, “ Some 
of these days we are going to Bethel,” I cannot help. 
thinking of this bitter truth of life. It is easy to give 
our vices to our children; we rarely give them our 
virtues, and we never give them our visions. What 
did Dinah know about Jabbok, that midnight struggle? 
Not a thing. And the inexperienced girl got into 
terrible trouble in Shechem. It led to war and murder 
and blood and lust. 

Then Jacob said: ‘‘ Now look here, Rachel, I am 
going to Bethel by the straightest road. Let us take 
an inventory of our possessions and see if we cannot 
lighten our baggage, get rid of a lot of useless impedi- 
menta and take up our pilgrim life.” And the first 
thing he discovered was that he had strange gods in 
his baggage. Those strange gods got over the Jabbok, 
they got by the vision. There were bags of strange 
gods, and Jacob did not know it until he made up his 
mind to go to Bethel, and it had to be the ruin of a 
daughter to make him realise it. 

Jacob said: ‘ We will get rid of these strange gods. 
We will get back to the law and the testimony. We 
will put our feet on the unshakable certainties we know 


RELIGION IN TWO WORLDS 27 


to be true.” Then he said: “ Put on clean garments. 
They are the symbols of our changed life.” Some of 
us do not resemble pilgrims. No man ever went ina 
parlour car to Bethel, never. There is only one way 
to go, and that is usually on foot, sometimes on your 
knees. But he was going to Bethel. 

I wonder if Jacob was disappointed with his Bethel. 
We usually are because while we can restore old rela- 
tions we can never repeat old emotions. This was 
vividly impressed on my mind by a visit to the scene 
of my boyhood in the south. I had been taken to an 
old plantation; and among the slave quarters, still 
standing, had been built a children’s play house. The 
chief support of the building was a railroad spike 
driven into the logs. Upon my return after thirty-five 
years I wandered over into the old slave quarters. 
The roof had fallen in, while weeds and grass were 
growing through the rotting floor. The old faces 
were gone these many years, but the railroad spike 
was still there in the log walls. As I looked at it the 
playhouse of my boyhood seemed to grow out of the 
walls. I saw the young faces and heard the happy 
voices again. The old relations were restored, but I 
could not repeat the old emotions. They were gone 
for ever. 

We come to our Bethels, the dear places where first 
we knew life’s sanctities; sometimes finding God’s 
message in the tears and misfortunes of our children. 
We have long lost the power of feeling as once we did 
in the morning of our pilgrimage, but we can restore 
the old relations, and learn from bitter experience that 
life is spiritual. After much wayfaring, God brings us 
through fire and water to the large place of the soul, 
and we find our kingdom when we have lost ourselves. 


II 
ONE GENERATION TO ANOTHER 


“ And it came to pass, when they were gone over, that 
Elijah said unto Elisha, Ask what I shall do for thee, 
before I be taken from thee. And Elisha said, I pray 
thee, let a double portion of thy spirst be upon me. And 
he said, Thou hast asked a hard thing; nevertheless, tf 
thou see me when I am taken from thee, it shall be so 
Nee but sf not, it shall not be so.’—II Kines 


RECENT writer has said that “no one thing ) 
A in the history of the world has had more effect | 
than the natural overlapping of the generations._ 
This fact is so simple that it is hardly ever expressly 
mentioned, but for the reflective mind it is the very 
essence of the whole philosophy of life.”’” It is inevi-- . 
table that an organisation like the Church should be 
influenced by the tidal forces. of society. A boat is | 
not unsafe because it rises and falls with the tide, but } 
only when it drifts. If the Church’s anchor holds, it / 
may change with social changes without detriment to 
its influences. In idea it is Divine, but its form is 
necessarily human. On that account, the important 
question is: How are we of the present generation to 
transmit our great inheritance of tradition and belief 
and custom to coming generations? It is this problem 2 
that makes the story of Elijah and Elisha of Sur passttig 
importance. 
Elijah was one of those mysterious personalities, 


28 


ONE GENERATION TO ANOTHER 29 


who suddenly appears in an epoch, unheralded and-un- 
known, with a sense of Divine authority. He was 
called to save Israel from religious ruin in an age when 
as a result of Ahab’s marriage with Jezebel, foreign 
superstitions threatened extinction of the true faith. 
The nation was divided into three groups. At one 
extreme were the godly people, at the other the heathen 
folk, while between them, a large group of waverers 
halted between two opinions, now for Jehovah, and 
now for Baal. Elijah was a root-and-branch sort of 
a man, who said to his generation: “ How long halt 
ye between two opinions?” and summoned them to the 
top of Carmel for a decisive test, in which for the 
moment he was successful. ; 

Then follows the familiar story of his flight. But 
it is a mistake to assume that this was due to fear of 
Jezebel. The true explanation is that the prophet real- 
ised it would be inexpedient at that time to come to an 
open collision with the queen; and his flight at the 
outset was a genuine retreat to victory. He was not 
running from an angry woman, but going back to 
Mount Sinai to get a bigger club. He wanted better 
munitions and more powerful guns, and was going to 
the central manufactory, that great mountain encircled 
with fire and smoke where God had once spoken so. 
decisively to His-people. But he broke down on the 
way, grew weary of his adventure and desired to sur- 
render his responsibility. ) 

The causes of his discouragement are two: his lone- 
liness and limited conception of Divine activity. When 
he complained about being left alone with his stupen- 
dous burden, God reminded him of the presence in 
Israel of seven thousand who had not bowed the knee 
to Baal. As a leader it was his business to find out 


30 MAKING OF A GREAT TRADITION 


‘who were on the Lord’s side, and-organise them in such 
la way as to promote his aims. But he seems never to 


have thought much about co-operation, nor to have. _ 
desired the assistance of anybody. He was ina certain — 
sense self-centered, a man who imagined himself_in- _ 


dispensable to the Divine purpose, and it was only after 
his breakdown, that he became aware of his. bitter 

loneliness. This was increased by his mistaken con- 
ception of the Divine activity. Elijah believed in a 
fiat God, who came into the universe in destructive and 
catastrophic ways. When he remembered the dramatic 
climax of ‘his prophetical ministry on Mount Carmel, 
it seemed as if his view were justified; but this terrible 
reverse, this unexpected anti-climax had seriously dis- 
turbed his faith. He thought that because he failed, 
- God had failed. Then the Lord took him under the 
~ shadow of the great mountain and opened his mind to 
a larger conception. God was not in the storm, nor the 


earthquake, nor the thunder, nor the lightning, but — 
strangely enough He was in the still, small voice. This 


voice reminded the discouraged prophet that God had 
other ways than those of destruction of emphasising 
His presence in the world. 


In his French Revolution Carlyle makes some strik- 


ing comments on history. He says that history is not 
the record of the doings, but of the misdoings of men. 


The destructive forces of life are usually the noisy 


forces, while the constructive forces, the forces that 
build, are the quiet, modest forces. And history as 
men usually write it, is very largely a story of war 
and disaster. If you could take the noise out of the 
world you would put most newspapers out of business. 
It is the noisy things as a rule that get themselves into 


print. But who has ever written an adequate story of 


ee ee Ne a a 





ONE GENERATION TO ANOTHER 31 


the constructive force of love? Elijah reasoned: God 
is power, therefore power must destroy that which is 
unlike itself in spectacular ways. This line of reason- 
‘ing seemed to be effective on Carmel, but something 
happened to it when the prophet faced the wrath of 
Jezebel. That is why the Almighty revealed the other 
side of His providence to his lonely and discouraged 
servant. At the close of the vision, he was told to 
anoint a certain man as his successor, by which God 
gently reminds him that his work was over. 

The reason for the change is this: times change. a 
men do not always change with them. This is one of 
the hardest truths to accept. It is often a bitter dis- 
appointment for a devoted servant to realise that he 
has outlived his usefulness. But we can see that the 
times had changed, that Israel needed a_ different 
kind of leader; for the work to be done now was no 
longer destructive but constructive. God wanted a 
man of irenic spirit, of a very different type. By 
this means God reminded Elijah that there are no 
indispensable men. 

The choice fell on a young farmer named Elisha. 
The young man was greatly impressed with the com- 
munication of the prophet. Yet there is a touch of 
humour about the story, for Elijah behaved all through 
it as much as to say, “ Young man, it is true that God 
has appointed you to be my successor, but you need not 
be in such a great hurry to get into my shoes.” On this 
account the prophet kept him for a considerable time 
in a state of pupilage and subordination. 

The contrast in the mission of these men will further 
bring out the differences in their temperament. ‘The 
work of Elijah had been dramatic and.episodic. The 
work of Elisha was constant and commonplace. Elijah, 


32°. MAKING OF A GREAT TRADITION 


‘ if you estimate his mission in terms of activity, prob- 
-’ably occupied a very small place in the thought and life 
“of his country. He came and went like a flash of _ 
’ lightning; but Elisha lived for fifty years in the most 
intimate contact with the people. The home of Elijah 
was in the desert; the home of Elisha in the towns and 
cities. He was a patron and encourager of education 
and the organiser, as we would say, of the activities -of 
the Church. 

Our interest is in how the great responsibility was 
transmitted from one man to another. As I have said, 
Elijah found Elisha in the field and told what he was 
to do, but for a long time kept him in a state of subor- 
dination. The hour, however, of the old man’s transla- 
tion was approaching. During the period of pupilage 
Elisha proved his constancy by the way, in spite of 
enormous difficulties, he had persisted in following his 
master. Elijah was testing the merits of the young 
man, for if you read the story accurately, you will see 
that as they moved from village to village Elijah would - 
turn and say, “ You had better stop here, Elisha, for I 
am going on yonder a little further.” To this the 
young man would reply, “ As the Lord liveth, and as 
thy soul liveth, I will not leave thee.” And every now 
and then the young man would meet a group of theo- 
logical students, and they would say: “ Don’t you know 
that your master is going to be taken away today?” — 
And to them Elisha would reply: “ Yes, I know it; 
hold your peace.”” Wherever he met with discourage- 
ment he persisted in following. During this trying 
period the old man seems not to have helped him much, 
or to have told him of what he was expected to do. 
Finally, however, they reached the critical period, that 
place in the wilderness where the translation was immi- 


ONE GENERATION TO ANOTHER 33 


nent, and there the old man turned around to his young 
follower and shot this question at him: “ What do you 
want, anyhow, young man? What really are you 
after? Ask it quickly before I am taken from you 
forever.” 

I think this was a critical moment in his experience. 
Such a moment comes to all of us when we are obliged 
to reveal the quality of our minds in the things we ~ 
actually ask for. Elisha might have replied: ‘‘ Make 
~my_work.easier. You have had a tempestuous career 
with Ahab and Jezebel. Make my work easier.’”’ Or, 
he might have said: “ Give me such an endowment of 
“wisdom as shall enable me to triumph over my. ene- 
mies.” He might have asked for many things that 
were useful in themselves, but this is what he said: 
“Give me a double portion of thy spirit.” 

The old man looked at him a moment with kindling 
eyes: “ Aha! you are a pretty keen young man after 
all. That is a very, very good thing you have asked 
for, but I am not sure you are worthy of it. You 
are asking a hard thing, but if you have spiritual 
insight enough to understand the meaning of my 
translation, then you shall have it; but if not, you shall 
not have it.” 

Presently the great translation took place. And as 
Elijah looked down from the flaming chariot into the 
eager face of his disciple, he realised that he fully com- 
prehended its meaning. He threw down his mantle 
upon the young man and disappeared. Elisha took it 
up, smote the waters and went through them, put it 
about his shoulders, and when he returned to the in- 
quisitive sons of the prophets, they said, “ The mantle 
of Elijah has fallen upon Elisha,” and they did him 
reverence there. 


34 MAKING OF A GREAT TRADITION 


This is a great story, superlatively great as an illus- 


tration of the power of spiritual insight. Elisha was © 


about to undertake a very commonplace, undramatic 
sort of task. No opportunities would be afforded him 
to be so decisive a factor in his time as his predecessor 
. had been; yet he seemed to feel that this commonplace, 
 réutine Work of construction required a double portion 
” of the valiant spirit that his master had had, and it was 
for this alone that he asked. 

This brings out two.very important reflections con- 
cerning the way responsibility may be transmitted from 
one generation to another. | Perhaps I can make it clear 
by putting it in the form of questions. First, what is 
‘the gift the younger generation should ask from the 
older generation? And secondly, what is the test.of 
fitness for having it? If we can answer these ques- 
tions, we need have no anxiety about the Church 
of God. 


What, then, is the gift the younger generation should _ 
~ ask of their fathers? I think there is some confusion ) 


as to the relation of one generation to another. Some 


errors about this matter seem to follow the human race ~ 


through the centuries. Take, for example, the popular 
error that wisdom can be transmitted from one gener- 
ation to another. This is a very old delusion. The 
proof of it is the range and extent of what is known 


‘as proverbial wisdom. A facetious modern writer once 


remarked that “ Solomon could not keep the Proverbs, 
so he wrote them.” And when our fathers talk to us 
in proverbial strain, they are simply telling us in quot- 
able ways the things they wish they had done; and we 
have a right to ask if they could not do them, how in 


the world can they expect us to do them? We cannot. 
transmit our wisdom, or our experience to our children. © 


ee eS 





ONE GENERATION TO ANOTHER 35 


Yet in spite of this much time is wasted in the effort 
to do it. The old generation comes to the new with 
words of authority demanding, it would seem at times, 
a passive and uncritical acceptance of all that the older 
generation offers. This leads to a two-fold misunder- 
standing: one concerns BPO of work; the other 
forms of truth. ' 

Let us take this case. Sircde Elijah, when Elisha 
asked him for advice as to how to carry on his work, 
had said, “ Young man, adopt my method, or you shall 
not have my blessing. Go back to Samaria, gather the 
people about you and call down fire from heaven and 
burn up your enemies; destroy them root and branch.” 
You can see that this is the very reason why God was 
withdrawing the older prophet from his labours. God 
wanted a constructor and builder. He wanted a man 
of irenic spirit. 

Or suppose Elijah had said, “ You must take my 
limited conception of God. God works only by fits 
and starts. He is in the thunder, He is in the lightning, 
He is in the earthquakes, He is in the upheavals. His 
methods are all destructive.” Again you see he would 
have left the still, small voice entirely out of account, 
and his servant would have been unable to succeed in 
a generation that needed an entirely different concep- 
tion of God. 

But Elijah was a wise man. He did not offer the 
young man anything. He simply asked him, “ What 
do you want?” and made him the judge of the thing, 
leaving him to draw the inference from his association 
with himself. 

Now there is a great deal to be said about methods 
of work. Every leader of God’s people knows how 
easily they excite themselves over trifles. Some are 


36 MAKING OF A GREAT TRADITION 


ready to dispute over such things as the length or short- 
ness of a man’s ecclesiastical garments, or quarrel about 
whether you shall have a prayer before or after the 
offering, whether you shall stand or sit during the sing- 
ing. ‘The standard of value for this type of mind is 
what has once been done must always be done. Such 
minds are unable to see that times change and methods 
must change with them. 

It is a graver matter still when you come to the 
| forms_of truth, what we are to believe and how we 
are to believe it. We ought at least to recognise this: 
that while the truth of: God.in..essence-is the same. 
through all generations, there must needs be various 
shades of light thrown on each phase of life in each 
generation, and the Church would have beggared itself 
long ago had it discarded what each generation had to 
give. It is apparent here that the conception of God 
was growing in Elijah’s time. The old destructive 
idea was gradually giving way before a more winsome > 
and constructive idea as symbolised by the still, small 
voice. It is this necessity of finding forms of truth to 
meet the needs of each generation that causes so much 
friction between the old and young. Sometimes we do 
not know how to recognise the difficulty in the minds 
of our children. But after all is said and done each one 
must do his own thinking about religion, and there 
comes a time in the young life when the necessities of 
its growth will compel it to stand without the shadow 
of the father’s influence. 

Mary learned this lesson from her Son when she 
found Him in Jerusalem, and said, ‘“‘ Thy father and I 
have sought thee sorrowing ”; and He replied, ‘‘ Wist 
ye not I must be about my Father’s business?” Even 
at the early age of twelve Jesus was standing without 





ONE GENERATION TO ANOTHER 37 


the mother’s shadow and perplexing her loving heart 
with an attitude that she could not understand. 

But we may as well recognise it, that one of the great 
losses of the present-day Church is the loss of control 
of the active intelligence of the people. Multitudes 
stray by the doors of our churches and are putting the 
fertility and vitality of mind which used to go into 
the comprehension of the Word of God and the true 
ends of life into activities and forms of expression that 
have little or no connection with organised religion. 
Some of the most acute minds that we know rarely go 
inside of a church, or if they do, they do not expect to 
be intellectually aroused. The reason perhaps from our 
side is that we are not teaching the people anything 
about religion. Might this not mean that the older 
generation, even with the best intentions, has been 
unable to market its religious wares? 

I am pleading for tolerance, sympathy and gener- 


-osity of mind toward coming generations. We must 


°” 
f 


, change our Elijah spirit. You cannot hand down to a 
succeeding generation even in undisturbed times the 


particular way in which you hold your religious con- 
victions. You must respect each man’s individual 
rights and let him work out his own salvation, helping 
him meanwhile all you can with tolerance, patience 
and sympathy. 

We cannot transmit our_methods or the fixed ways 
in which we hold our convictions. What we can do is 


~to impart a double portion of our spirit. By spirit I 


mean an essential, invariable and conscientious way of 
living, something that controls and gives quality and 
meaning to a man’s whole experience. A mature fol- 
lower of Christ always puts an original interpretation 
on Christ. Find that unifying and connecting element 


38 MAKING OF A GREAT TRADITION 


in each detail of a man’s life, and you have discovered 
the man’s spirit. The thing that Elisha asked for, that 
which the younger generation should ask of the older 
generation, was a double portion of the right spirit. 

May I venture to point out one or two things by way 
of analysis of what that spirit is? I begin with the 
human end of it. You find in the men of the older 
generation an intense and unshakable belief in the 
primacy of the inner sanctities of life; that is to say, 
they believe that the object of life is the cultivation of 
personal holiness. In striking contrast to this mode 
you have the visible aspect of the modern Church, an 
aggregation of noisy activities. ‘The Church is full of 
committeemen and organisers of religious enterprises. 
They are substituting external activities which deal 
with the material side of life, for the pursuit of the 
inner sanctity of character,—that quality which has 
ever been a distinctive mark of a disciple,—holiness. 

Our fathers were not like that. They were not as 
widely informed as modern men are, but they did know 
and strive after personal holiness which is the fruit of 
obedience to Christ. 

The writer to the Hebrews reminds us that without 
holiness men cannot. see God. The older generation 
had this original quality in their piety and if you had 
asked them the source\of it they would have replied 
that they obtained it through the redemptive and aton- 
ing mercy of the Lord Jesus Christ. They had no 
illusions about human perfections.. They were not in 
love with half-and-half measures of salvation; but they 
believed, sincerely believed, that they had been cleansed 
and forgiven by the Lord Jesus Christ, and that He had 
made the pursuit of holiness the supreme activity of 
life. As John puts it, “ Every man that hath this hope 


ONE GENERATION TO ANOTHER 39 


in him purifieth himself, even as he is pure.” And 
what is that hope in essence but this—that one shall 
see and become like Him? Follow this into its re- 


moter implications and you will see that the pursuit of 


holiness is inspired by an experimental acquaintance 
with the redeeming love of Christ. That is why the 
older generation took such pains to think out its con- 
ception of religion and to organise its knowledge in the 
form of stable, unchanging convictions. 

Now, faith_is sometimes emotion and always an 
energy. But, inevitably, if it is to be real it must also 
be a conception of thought. It must be stabilised with 
ideas, for the ideas that men hold about religion are the 
hooks of their faith. They are the connecting links of 
a man’s activities, they are the organised relationships 
between a man’s words and a man’s promises, and 
between a man’s promises and his inner desire. Hence 
the older generation was full of convictions nourished 
on Holy Scripture. They loved the Bible. They read 
it because they believed in the Word of God, and they 
were usually able to give a reason unto them that asked 
it for the hope that was in them. I think this is the 
finest and best thing that the world has ever produced. 
It is upon such convictions that Jesus Christ has 
founded His Church, and it has been that spirit which 
has kept alive Christian ideals even unto this day. 

Some of us who have known the disturbances of our 
modern world find that one of the potent causes of 
our present faith is the influence the older generation 
had over our minds in the/formative periods of our 
career. It is because we have known good men that 
we are helped to believe in the authority and desirable- 
ness of the good life, and when the younger generation, 
however disturbed intellectually, seriously seeks. a 


40 MAKING OF A GREAT TRADITION 


double portion of the spirit of the older generation it 
will find in that endowment one of the most effective 
measures of saving itself from impressionism and in- 
_tellectual instability that often ends in failure. It is 
discouraging to note the present tendency to substitute 
an impressionistic life for a conviction life. Some 
people treat their minds religiously as if they were of 
no more consequence than waste-baskets. If you could 
look into them they would be found to be full of scraps, 
a little here and a little there, but nowhere is there 
organisation, nowhere is there living connection be- 
tween their thoughts and their experiences: Some 
depend on brilliant ministers, others on social relations, 
while others follow the habits formed in godly homes; 
but as for having a living conviction about Christ or 
putting an original interpretation upon Christ, it simply 
is not there. | 

That is why I believe that the greatest single need of 
the present day is a double portion of the spirit of the 


older generation. We are living in a brilliant and 
versatile age, more in love with motion than it is inter- - . 


ested in ends and terminal facilities. The necessity for | 
character building, for the formation of habits that 
produce capable, dependable servants of the community 
and of the Church, is not only a commonplace and 
familiar business, but it is a terribly slow business. 
Nothing has more perplexed us in recent years than the ' 
prevalence among the churches of an idea that you can 
produce character and form habits by large, spectac- 
ular, mass-movements. Such enterprises for example 
as was familiar in this country a few years ago under 
the name of ‘ The World in Boston,” designed to téach 
people to believe in foreign missions by a big circus, a 
kind of fair of three weeks’ duration. Imagine Paul, 





ONE GENERATION TO ANOTHER 41 


or Luther, or David Livingstone trying to interest 
people in foreign missions in this fashion! We suc- 
ceeded only in interesting a great many of our young 
people in the theatrical profession. Perhaps the mod- 
ern Church has learned something from its folly. Still 
there are some people like Solomon’s fool, if you put 
them in a mortar you could not beat the folly out of 
them. But it seems to me, in view of the fact that 
nearly all of the novel methods have been tried and 
found wanting, that we are now about to return to the 
old undramatic, unspectacular business of character 
construction through the labourious process of Chris- 
tian education. 

How, then, are we going to prove our fitness for 
this? A great gift cannot be entrusted to men unless 
you know what they are going to do with it. I think 
the whole of this fitness is summed up in the words 
“spiritual receptivity.’ Here, on the one hand, was 
Elisha and on the other Elijah, caught up immediately 
into a flaming chariot. The young man saw something 
more than the translation of a great saint. He saw 
God in the experience. He also realised the transmis- 
sion of responsibility when the mantle of the old man 
touched his young shoulders. He knew that he was 
ordained and set apart. What is this, then, but recep- 
tivity, an openness of mind, a sensitiveness of con- 
sciousness that constrains one to be obedient to the 
heavenly vision? This has been one of the difficulties 
of our day. The minds of many are like a dusty, coun- 
try road. Nothing can grow there because the sensitive 
surfaces have been destroyed. This want of receptivity 
and appreciation is nowhere more strikingly illustrated 
than in the failure of the sons and daughters of godly 
parents to profit by their religious inheritance. How 


A2 MAKING OF A GREAT TRADITION 


often we come upon this grim fact of people who are 
wallowing in the perfumed slime of an esthetic culture 
while their parents were caught up in the splendour and 
glow of a consecrated life. To have descended from 
godly ancsetors and then spend your active life in plan- 
ning business enterprises, or in moving heaven and 
earth to obtain a questionable social position, and to 
be indifferent to the finer adventures of life, is indeed 
a tragedy far too common in these crowded times. 
Well, indeed, would it be for us to consider the kind of 
fathers and mothers we had; to remember before it is 
too late that we, too, are responsible for transmitting 
intact that glorious heritage to generations yet unborn. 

When I think of one place in this country, the fruit 
of a great Christian life, and of the extraordinary in- 
fluence that is still exercised by one who was wise 
enough to receive the responsibility, and that today, 
although Dwight L. Moody is in glory, his work is 
going on, and that thousands of souls all over the world 
have been the beneficiaries of the Northfield influence, 


I have the utmost confidence in affirming that the su- 


preme need of this generation is a double portion of the 
spirit of the generation that has passed. It seems to 
me that a clear call for personal consecration comes to 
us from this story. 

I spent the last month of his life with the late John 
Sparhawk Jones and for many days we walked the 


sands of Gloucester and talked about the Church, and 


in the last conversation I had with him he turned ab- 
ruptly upon me and said: “ Young man, when I think 
of the confusion of this time and the perplexity of the 
Church, I am glad that my race is almost run.” Re- 
flecting upon this later in the light of his sudden trans- 


lation, a saying of Herodotus came to me. A king one 





eo Ee ee a ae ee 


ONE GENERATION TO ANOTHER 43 


day asked an old retainer to do a certain thing, and the 
retainer replied: “I am too old to move and stir, O 
King. Let one of the younger men do these things.” 
That is what the older generation is saying to the 
younger generation: “Let one of the younger men 
here do these things.” 

This is a clear call to all who are ambitious to assist 
in the transmission of the ancient inheritance from one 
generation to another. We have the right to choose 
methods suitable to the time; we are obliged to clothe 
religion in our own intellectual conceptions, but to 
make the transfer effective, we must have a double por- 
tion of the ancestral spirit, in order that those who 
follow after may say of us as was said in the days of 
old: “ The mantle of Elijah has fallen upon Elisha.” 


III 


THE WITHERED GOURD OR THE DYING 
WORLD 


“ And the Lord said, Thou hast had pity on the gourd, 
for the which thou hast not laboured, neither madest tt 
to grow; which came up in a night, and perished m a 
night; and should I not have pity on Nineveh, that great 
city, wherein are more than sixscore thousand persons 
that cannot discern between their right hand and thew left 
hand ; and also much cattle? ’—Jonau 4: 10-11. 


HE Book of Jonah is clearly a didactic piece of 
writing, a tract for the times, in the form of a 
prophetic parable, and is associated, as is the 

Book of Job, with an historic character by the name of 
Jonah. Its purpose was to teach something to the 
Church of that day about its duty; and the message is 
contained in three conceptions. 

1. It emphasises God’s universal purpose to give 
salvation to the Gentiles. There is nothing that more 
strongly appeals to the historic imagination when — 
guided by faith than to watch the light break succes- 
sively upon each century as the story of God’s good- 
ness is unfolded in the Old Testament. One after 
another the obstacles clear away until the splendour of 
the Divine purpose to redeem the world breaks upon 
our minds in full-orbed significance. That is the mean- 
ing of Jonah’s story. The Book tells us that God 
ordered a certain man to preach salvation to a great 
Gentile city. Paul called this a mystery, a divine secret 


44 





THE WITHERED GOURD 45 


revealed only in New Testament times. Still the Old 
Testament, especially the latter part of it, is full of 
intimations of this character. 

2. The Gentile world, in a more or less conscious 
way, was susceptible to the reception of the message. 
The preacher goes to Nineveh, and Nineveh repents 
and turns to God. This would seem to indicate that 
the writer was living in an age when Gentile peoples 
were becoming more and more susceptible to new im- 
pressions, and, on that account, were offering a fertile 
field for missionary activities. And anyone that knows 
something of the effect of Alexander’s conquests and 
the attitude at that time of Gentile peoples towards 
religious, moral and philosophic questions, must realise 
the extraordinary appropriateness of that conception. 
We might also venture to say that the Book of Jonah 
was written in part for the benefit of God-fearing Gen- 
tiles before New Testament times. For the greater 
part of converts to Christianity, in the time of Christ, 
came from the class of devout heathen clustering 
around the Jewish synagogue, who believed profoundly 
in ethical monotheism. Of such were the Greeks who 
came to Philip the Apostle, saying, “ Sir, we would see 
Jesus.” Cornelius, Lydia, the seller of purple, and 
many other famous and lovable names in the Acts of 
the Apostles, also belonged to this type. From this 
point of view the Book of Jonah reaches across the 
centuries toward the coming of the Lord, with a prom- 
ise of fulfillment in rich and historic demonstrations of 
the Divine purpose to save the world 

3. The extraordinary unwillingness of the trustees 
of God’s grace to give salvation to the world. The 
attitude of Jonah is the attitude of an aristocratic, 
thoroughly orthodox and highly traditionalised Jew of 


46 MAKING OF A GREAT TRADITION 


his time. ‘That, unhappily, is characteristic of the Jew- 
ish people in all periods of their existence. Their 
prophets were lonely men, and even in the centuries of 
extraordinary receptivity in Gentile peoples they were 
laying the foundations for those unhappy divisions 
which in our Lord’s time, as Sadduceeism and Phari- 
saism, did so much to destroy His influence over His 
own people. This same exclusive tendency developed 
the unfortunate influence in the early church known as 
the Judaising movement. Jonah is the father of all 
narrow-minded, ecclesiastical persons who are unwil- 
ling to fulfill the responsibility of their charge even 
though they know beyond any doubt precisely what 
God wants them to do. I propose, then, to tell his 
story in four stages: 

I. Jonah’s Commission and the Reason Why He 
Was Unwilling to Fulfill It. He was sent to Nineveh, 
the capital of Assyria, the oppressor of God’s people for 
more than two hundred years, and all the righteous 
hatred of those ill-used folk was concentrated upon that 
abhorred and abominable name. What the word “ Ger- 
many” meant to a Belgian or a Serbian during the 
Great War, the word “ Nineveh” signified to a devout 
Jew. This rancorous and righteous indignation, the 
fear and abhorrence of the mysterious power of evil in 
the world, were concentrated in that portentous name, 
and when Nineveh was destroyed, and you can read of 
it in the prophecy of Nahum, all the hot-hearted wrath 
of that ancient people was expressed in their joy over 
its destruction. 

On the face of it Jonah’s commission was one that 
an orthodox Jew would have been very glad to carry 
out. God said: “Go and cry unto Nineveh for its sins 
are great’; and on the surface the mission was one of 








THE WITHERED GOURD 47 


condemnation. Had Jonah really believed that con- 
demnation was the Lord’s intention and that he was 
being sent, not only as the representative of Jehovah, 
but as the authoritative spokesman of the Jewish 
Church to tell the hated Gentile city that forty days 
should elapse and then should come chaos and destruc- 
tion, he would have fulfilled his mission with extra- 
ordinary enthusiasm. But he had his doubts when the 
command came. He said, “I know the disposition of 
God. His heart is broader than it ought to be. He is 
far more tenderly concerned about these people than 
He has a right to be. I suspect that He has ulterior 
objects in this adventure and I do not like the idea 
at all.” Then he bethought himself, still influenced by 
the ancient delusion of a tribal God, “I will slip away 
quietly and get out of His jurisdiction and avoid the 
unpleasant task.” But after an adventurous sea voyage 
he comes back and decides the only safe thing to do is 
to carry out the commission. 

Now the thing that bothered the man was that he 
knew the purposes of God were merciful. Even then, 
it was beginning to dawn upon the mind of the ortho- 
dox Jew that God’s heart was wonderfully kind; that 
the essence of religion was the offer of mercy, not the 
threat of judgment. He did his best to avoid commit- 
ting himself to the doubtful position. 

This was one of the reasons why the Pharisees were 
unable to understand Jesus; it was also one of the. 
reasons why the Jewish Christians made so much 
trouble for Paul on Gentile territory. They did not 
like the idea of offering salvation unto Gentile peoples 
in these uncanonical and unecclesiastical ways. Had 
Jonah been commissioned to go to Nineveh to offer 
salvation on terms of becoming proselytes to the Jewish 


48 MAKING OF A GREAT TRADITION 


religion, it is easy to imagine what a satisfying concep- 
tion that would have been to Jewish ecclesiastic pride. 
Picture it to your mind. Here is the proud Gentile 
king, his courtiers, lords and great captains, his men 
and women of high position, all coming in solemn pro- 
cession, in sackcloth and ashes, across the Mesopo- 
tamian desert, over the very road the people of God had 
been dragged by their heathen oppressors, to Mount 
Zion to become proselytes to the Jewish law, with 
Jonah and his ecclesiastical associates standing at the 
door of the temple to examine them touching their fit- 
ness for membership in the Jewish church. It would 
have been a most delightful thing. But that was not 
the commission at all. There was nothing said about 
coming to Jerusalem, nor about becoming proselytes. 
The Jew was not even mentioned. All his traditions 
were quietly set aside and he was told to inform the 
people they were to be saved on terms of repentance 
alone. | 

That was the thing that troubled the Jewish Chris- 
tians in Paul’s day. You know how much trouble they 
made for him in the beginning of his missionary activ- 
ity, particularly in the Church at Antioch, where certain 
nameless disciples preached salvation to Gentiles on 
simple terms of faith and repentance. You will re-— 
member how Peter wavered and could not make up his 
mind if the thing were right or not. And even Cor- 
nelius was regarded as an exceptional case, and when 
Peter reported his advent into the Church he was re- 
minded not to let it happen again lest, haply, worse 
things befall them. They could not believe that giving 
salvation on such simple, elementary terms was regular. 
It was not, as some religious persons say, done decently 
and in order. That is why Jonah felt so keenly about 





THE WITHERED GOURD 49 


the whole business. Yet he went because, forsooth, he 
could not do anything else. 

II. Jonah’s Disappointment with His Success. No 
matter how the man felt, he did some mighty good 
preaching in Nineveh, and the whole community from 
the king down is said to have turned to God. This did 
not surprise Jonah very much, but it did keenly disap- 
point him. Jonah is the only preacher on record who 


» ever made a great success a ground for complaint. We 


have heard a great deal about the failure of people to 
become Christians and many are discouraged because 
of the lack of fruit. But here is a man who brought a 
whole city to God, and on that account is full of com- 
plaints. And this is what he says: “ Was not this 
exactly my thought while I was yet in my own country? 
I suspected this thing from the very start. I realise 
that God’s heart is bigger than my heart; but all the 
same I do not propose to sympathise with this adven- 
ture.’ And so he became very angry. 

Jonah’s anger was rooted in jealousy. Compare him 
a moment with Elijah. Elijah was discouraged and 
wanted to die because he was jealous on account of 
God. He was very unhappy because the people did not 
turn to God. But Jonah is jealous of God. He is jeal- 
ous of God’s interest in the Gentil.es He feels that God 
is not true to His first love, and so he is in a very bad 
and painful frame of mind. The Almighty forces on 
him the great question: “ Are you willing by personal 
service to carry the message of salvation to Nineveh? 
Is your heart right with My heart?” I think Jonah 
gave a decidedly negative answer. 

There was ground, as I have indicated, on which 
such a commission would have been very delightful to 
Jonah. If it had been a commission, the fulfillment of 


50 MAKING OF A GREAT TRADITION’ ¥&, 


which would have satisfied Jewish pride and met Jewish 
ecclesiastical pretensions, it would have been all right. 
But this is the point: a man may praise and greatly 
admire in an ideal form a conception of life, which he 
is most unwilling to realise in concrete and practical 
ways. Think of the great speeches on liberty that have 
been made in all ages by the ruling class, and compare 
their enthusiasm for liberty with the extraordinary 
reluctance to give freedom to the very classes whose 
enfranchisement seemed to stimulate their eloquent 
faculties to a maximum degree. It is a very difficult 
thing, indeed, to apply in concrete and practical ways 
principles that are easily admired and praised so long 
as they are kept in abstract form. 

Take the question of the evangelisation of the world, 
or that of city missions, the bringing in of the foreign 
population, the carrying of the Gospel to the poor and 
needy. It is easy to get an aristocratic and well-dressed 
congregation excited over this matter ; and if its appli-. 
cation be limited to the contribution of money, or the 
sending of somebody else among these people, they are _ 
ready to do it. But if some of these poorly dressed 
and humble folk happen to get in their pews on Sunday 
morning, there is usually a great to-do. They seem to 
feel that there is something wrong with the world when 
the people begin to come to church, though all the time 
they are talking about. the freedom of the Gospel, and 
inviting everybody to come. Jonah was very much in 
this frame of mind, and there is hardly anything so 
stubborn; there is hardly any attitude that yields so 
slowly as one that has transformed its principles into 
prejudices, and fixed its ingrained and organised selfish- 
ness upon a religious foundation. 

There is the story of the old Scotchwoman, a strict 


THE WITHERED GOURD 51 


Sabbatarian, whose minister was being taken to task 
by her for his seemingly lax interpretation of the 
Scripture on that, point, and he said: “ But, my good 
woman, didn’t you know that the Blessed Saviour 
authorised the disciples to go into the field on the 
Sabbath Day and pluck corn that they might feed 
themselves? ” 

She replied, “ Aye, Dominie, I ken all aboot that, 
and I never thought any the better of Him for it.” 

This is the way Jonah reasoned. “God may get 
these Gentile people into the Church any way He likes, 
but so far as I am concerned I am going to wash my 
hands of the whole business.” ‘There are many people 
in our churches of the same mind. I have known fash- 
ionable folk leave churches because the poor people 
were coming in. The odour of the people in the house 
of God is better than the odour of incense, but it has 
never been popular. That was the trouble with Jonah. 
His religious experience, modes of thought, and habits 
of life, had become so attached to a lot of transitory 
things that he did not want anybody in his church who 
could not adjust himself to his particular standard, and 
for that reason he did not propose to sympathise with 
this extraordinary missionary adventure. 

III. Jonah’s Retirement, and the Symbolism of the 
Gourd. When a man determines to make himself un- 
comfortable he can generally succeed. Jonah reasoned 
after this fashion: ‘‘ My ministry is done, I have fin- 
ished all that the Lord commanded me to do. [I am not 
at all in sympathy with a plan which I suspected from 
the beginning. I propose, therefore, to separate myself 
from the matter and withdraw from the city.” Now 
why do you suppose he went over and sat on a hill 
overlooking the town? I think he did it because he 


52 MAKING OF A GREAT TRADITION 


hoped the Ninevites would change their minds. ‘This 
wholesale repentance was a pretty big contract; they 
might lapse, and if they did, then the Lord. would be 
compelled to come around to Jonah’s point of view. 
The man was marking time until he could bring the 
Almighty’s plan into harmony with his idea of how 
things ought to work. At any rate, he did not want 
anybody to have any illusions about his relations to this 
vast movement. So far as he was concerned, he was 
through, hence he goes out and sits on a hillside, and 
the gourd grows up around him. 

What is the meaning of the gourd? It is a symbol. 
It is a symbol of creature comforts, because the gourd © 
served a useful purpose in sheltering the prophet from 
the heat of the sun, and it also gave him a nice, cool 
place to sleep. And yet what we get here is an illus- 
tration of how a man may quickly lose his sense of 
perspective; how a scheme of values will get itself 
reversed because of selfishness. Jonah took great dis- 
content in the salvation of a city a great deal larger 
than his insignificant hill-town of Jerusalem. It did = 
not content him at all; it angered him every time he 
thought of Nineveh. But when he thought of the 
gourd he took great content in it. Do not let that slip 
over your minds, but rather let it go straight into your 
hearts—he took great content in the gourd. 

What is the gourd but a symbol of all those lesser 
interests in life, those private hobbies, those curiously 
camouflaged prejudices that we sometimes call our 
principles, those obsolete or gradually lessening tradi- 
tions which we cling to in face of the expanding glory 
of God’s grace? We lose our interest in the big things, 
and become intensely absorbed and contented with 
the gourd. 





THE WITHERED GOURD 53 


Take the Pharisee. The founders of the sect, begin- 
ning with Ezra, were probably the holiest men in the 
world at that time, and their attitude during the Macca- 
bean period is greatly to be commended. They were 
the first martyrs for faith. A nobler, finer group of 
believers has never lived on the face of the earth. And 
yet see what their successors became in the time of our 
Lord! They were tithing anise, mint and cummin, and 
neglecting the weightier matters of the law. If you 
have read Dr. Glover’s little book, The Jesus of His- 
tory, you will remember his caustic, brilliant comment 
on the saying of our Lord, they “ strain at a gnat, and 
swallow a camel.’”’ Look at the thing for a moment. 
Here is your Pharisee busy polishing his cup, polishing 
away every speck of dust, until it shines so that he can 
see his likeness in it. And he says to himself: “ My 
neighbour must understand that I am a very diligent 
and industrious man and I take the best of care of my 
silver. I never allow anything that contaminates me or 
corrupts me or makes me unclean.”’ And then a gnat 
lights on the rim of the cup. He says: “ This won’t 
do at all. I have got to do the thing over again, because 
the gnat has made it ceremonially unclean.” And he 
works away to get the stain off. Then along comes a 
camel and he swallows the thing, legs, humps and all, 
and does not even know it. That is our Saviour’s way 
of showing how values get reversed and how great 
things are lost sight of in the little things. So Jonah 
took great content in the gourd. 

This is the way of the world. It is very marked, 
even in great men; all of us lesser folk are often guilty 
of yielding to the temptation. When we cannot have 
our way we go out from an institution which we ought 
with all earnestness be supporting, to sit down and wait 


54 MAKING OF A GREAT TRADITION 


for its disappearance or destruction, simply because we 
are not allowed to run it. In the meantime we take 
great pleasure in gourds. 

There are many people, I fear, who are disappointed 
with the Church. I do not mean unbelievers; I refer to 
sincere but narrow-minded believers. Narrowness is 
the first infirmity of an ignoble mind. If you are 
capable of sustained narrowness, it is the evidence of 
the smallness of your nature. And yet this is very 
common in orthodox circles. Sometimes a person 
comes to the minister and says: “‘ My dear brother, I 
find it impossible to remain in your church. I do not 
agree with the behaviour of your official board. I do — 
not like your methods or organisation. I find the 
visible Church has lost the approval of God and I 
propose to leave it.” Now what does he do? He goes 
over and sits down on some imaginary hill, there he is; 
and the first thing you know he has got him a sign, and 
usually there is a lot of Scripture texts on it, but what 
I always read on the sign is: “ This man is taking great 
content in the gourd.” 

The gourd may be the symbol of interests which 
while they may be of some importance are still of a 
subordinate nature. If you look into the wallet of any 
denomination you will find many withered gourds— 
subordinate truths, overemphasised truths, contentious 
about things that are no longer vital, things that keep 
us from being one in spirit, from believing in the sin- 
cerity of our brethren and from getting help and in- 
spiration from all the good people in the world—all 
because of these withered gourds. When you go into 
your wallet for the bread of life to feed the hungry, 
what is the trouble with it? It is full of bits of with- 
ered gourds, and the people do not like it and will not 


THE WITHERED GOURD | 55 


eat it. These things may just be carried along with us, 
but they are so much impedimenta retarding our prog- 
ress toward the “ house not made with hands.” 

IV. Jonah Brought Face to Face with This Tre- 
mendous and Dramatic Conclusion: Which is more im- 
portant, the withered gourd or the dying world? 

One night not long after while Jonah was dreaming 
pleasantly of a day when Nineveh should backslide, a 
worm crawled out of the ground and began to gnaw at 
the root of the gourd, and when the sun came out the 
gourd began to wither. Jonah’s head got hot and 
began to ache, and then his heart got hot and he began 
to get mad, and this is what he said: “I wish I were 
dead now—more than ever. I am very, very angry.” 

And the Lord said, “‘ What is the matter, Jonah? ” 

“TI am angry even unto death.” 

66 Why ? 39 

Poise of the death You have tieled out to this 
gourd.” 

“Indeed!” said the Lord. “And are you to be 
angry for a gourd, a thing that grew in a night and 
died in a night, for which you did not labour, and 
over which even a worm has power; and shall I not 
have mercy on great Nineveh, this blind, mole-like, 
struggling city of mine, whose life is linked to My 
life, and whose heartaches and yearnings I have long 
understood?” : 

The writer, you see, was a good literary era Pee 
He does not close the Book like a tract. One reason 
people do not read tracts is because there is nothing left 
to the imagination, there is too much detail in them. 
The people who write tracts profess to know too much 
about the things they are describing. The writer of 
this Book does not tell us what happened to Jonah, but 


56 MAKING OF A GREAT TRADITION 


you can at once conclude that if he did not repent he 
must have been an apostate. 

“ Shall I not have mercy on great Nineveh, that 
great shadow-haunted city?” Some of you have seen 
Raphael’s Sistine Madonna. When you first looked at 
it you noted the face of the Madonna and Child, and 
then as your eye wanders over the background it breaks 
up into its constituent elements and is literally alive 
with baby faces that are looking at you out of the 
shadow. And that is the way here. You look at the 
face of Jonah and at the face of God, and then you see 
back of them this strange mixture of baby faces and 
grown faces, these Ninevites, this dying world of 
God’s. “ Shall I not have mercy on great Nineveh? ” 

What is the lesson for the modern Church? This 
Book shows the relation of the life force of God’s 
grace to the traditional moulds of its expression. Now, 
Judaism was a mould; the life force was the divine 
purpose to redeem the world, and anyone who studies 
the Bible will realise that the force of God must inevi- 
tably expand as the world becomes accessible to its . 
influence, so that a time must come when either the 
traditional moulds must expand with it, or break to 
pieces and allow the life force to strike out an order for 
itself and re-establish new traditions. There was no 
reason, humanly speaking, why Judaism should not 
have expanded along with it. But this book appears 
to have been written by a man standing on the frontiers 
of a new world, looking down the stream of centuries 
in anticipation of events shortly to come to pass, to 
show us how, at a critical moment in the history of that 
people, the ecclesiastical mould had hardened and be- 
come brittle, and how the life force pressing more and 
more into the mould broke it asunder and swept with 





THE WITHERED GOURD 57 


torrential force out upon the world creating a new 
order of tradition for itself. That is the teaching of 
the Book of Jonah, and that is the meaning of this 
tremendous contrast. 

The important thing is the life force of God. ‘The 
mould must expand with the life force until it is fitted 
to interpret still further the glory of the Lord. Our 
Saviour said that God did not put new wine into old 
bottles. This is the lesson of the Book. The new wine 
was the wine of this constantly expanding life force. 
The old bottles were the traditional moulds of Judaism 
that would not expand with it. It was inevitable, there- 
fore, that the moulds should break in order that the life 
force might be free for a larger expansion. And what 
you see in the Book of Jonah is the life force of Divine 
grace breaking through the ecclesiastical mould in order 
that it might reach out and overtake the growing recep- 
tivity in the heathen world round about. 

God’s purpose is always the same, but the modes of 
its manifestation must necessarily change, and we must 
change with them or break. I offer here in conclusion 
one or two reflections. 

Many are troubled and confused today about the 
status of Protestantism. Protestantism is a mode of 
expression of the life force of God. It is not very old 
in the history of the world. We are troubled about it, 
probably, because we are beginning to feel that it re- 
flects too conclusively a social system that is gradually 
but surely yielding to something entirely different. We 
belong, so far as our forbears are concerned, to an in- 
dividualistic society. We are rapidly evolving into a 
collectivist society. Now an individualistic society is 
one that can bring down from past centuries its tradi- 
tions and conceptions more or less intact and put them 


58 MAKING OF A GREAT TRADITION 


behind the individual in the form of conventions that 
have the force of Divine law for members of the group. 
We are able to speak of the God of our fathers. We 
have our ecclesiastical family trees, and the knowledge 
that we have descended from a good religious stock is 
an additional element in the stability of our character. 
We have a great interest in the past. We still cherish 
the illusion that the Puritans were the finest type of 
Protestant, and are still living more or less under the 
domination of a Puritan conception of morality and 
practice. 

But do you realise that one of the merits of an indi- 
vidualistic society long continuing, is respect for tradi- 
tion, while a collectivist society, which is the result of 
an expanding movement and the infiltration of different 
races, is a society that does not care a rap for tradition? 
It has no conception of the past, and attempts to begin 
‘all things de novo, and if we are to impress the vitality 
of our message upon the masses in the present day, we 
must do it by putting emphasis on the life force rather 
than on the traditional modes of expression that are 
still current in restricted religious circles. | 

This crisis which is now brought upon the Modern 
Church is manifest in the great epochs in which the 
world has suddenly expanded in new directions. Con- 
sider the extraordinary enlargement of life when Alex- 
ander knocked the world to pieces, letting the East and 
West get together, and all the old traditions and ancient 
Sanctions were temporarily set aside. Men found 
themselves floating in a great sea, glad to find a plank 
here and there that might carry them through to safety. 
It was in such a time that the practical and almost 
religious philosophies of Stoicism and Epicureanism 
were born. It was a time when the Gentile world, 


THE WITHERED GOURD 59 


under the influence of the Greek language and the 
spread of Greek culture, was brought into violent col- 
lision in the first place, and then almost into the relation 
of disciple and master to the Jewish Church itself. It 
was in that time that the Book of Jonah probably 
originated. At any rate it was such a time the Book 
anticipated. It found the Jewish Church unwilling to 
expand, incapable of understanding the great move- 
ments confronting it; so when the Lord came He found 
but a moribund and broken church, still holding obso- 
lete traditions, instead of possessing a vital faith ready 
to welcome the fulfilment of the ancient promise and 
recognise Him as Lord. 

One reason for the rapid expansion of Christianity 
in the first and second centuries of our era was the ex- 
traordinary receptivity of the heathen mind. The 
preachers of the gospel found little encouragement in 
Palestine, but so soon as they passed out into the wider 
domain of Asia Minor and Europe they met with an 
enthusiastic reception. The Palestinian’ Jew was tra- 
dition bound, but the Gentile through the political up- 
heavals and intellectual struggles of his immediate past 
had been made free. And in this free mental soil the 
good seed found an eager hospitality. 

The Reformation was an inevitable effect of the Ren- 
naisance. The revival of learning, the discovery of 
America, and the awakening of the scientific spirit 
greatly expanded man’s conception of the world, and 
brought him in a receptive mood face to face with 
great issues. 

I do not like to speak in superlatives, and whatever 
may be said, must be discounted somewhat because we 
are very close to our own period; but as I understand 
the historic contrast here alluded to, I can see nothing 


60 MAKING OF A GREAT TRADITION 


comparable to these times. We are standing at the 
place where the traditional conceptions of the past have 
come in conflict with the extraordinary intellectual and 
political activity of the present. We are living in an 
age of efflorescence such as the world has never known. 
In my Canadian camp on the shore of Lake Huron I 
have, when the season was late, seen this thing—the 
swarming of the lake fly. During the day the bush was 
silent, but so soon as the sun was set, a humming and 
buzzing would begin all over the forest. It sounded 
like the coming of a storm. And then slowly but surely 
there would rise above the edge of the bush great, 
swarming clouds of lake flies, millions of them. You 
could hear their humming and buzzing all around you, 
and yonder across the lake you could see them hovering 
over the islands, these swarming clouds of lake flies. 
Whether you looked to the east or the west or the north 
or the south you saw this fermenting, swarming mass 
of winged desire seeking some larger mode of self- 
realisation. This is the world we look upon today. 
The masses are in a state of profound unrest and con- 
fusion. You hear the buzzing and the humming of 
many peoples, like the sound of rushing waters; multi- 
tudes in the valley of decision, seeking through changes 
in government larger modes of self-expression. People 
are turning from obsolete and unworkable traditions, 
scorning ancient symbols, despising the stabilising in- 
fluences of an historical and connected knowledge, and 
endeavouring to begin life de novo and yet with an in- 
credible hunger for something that will give them con- 
fidence in the unseen things of life. 
Here we stand with our all-conquering Christ, 
Whose power is as demonstrable today as in the first 
century. We have the Bread of God to feed every hun- 











THE WITHERED GOURD 61 


gry multitude; with ideas to co-ordinate and stabilise 
their political and economic passions; with conceptions 
of social order, moral purity and spiritual aspiration 
which no other religion and no combination of philoso- 
phies can ever give them. What are we going to do 
with this power? Are we going to face this concen- 
trated need with dull and stupid minds, foolishly con- 
tending about withered gourds; or put our faith in the 
living power of the Divine Spirit, and with the courage 
of conviction and the patience of a God-disciplined life, 
thrust ourselves into this yeasty ferment with the only 
message that can satisfy the hunger of our day? We 
have never lived in such terribly searching times. We 
shall never again live in such a superlatively great time. 





PART II 
‘THE EDUCATION OF MOSES 











IV 
THE DISCIPLINE OF THE DESERT 


“Moses fled from the face of Pharaoh, and dwelt in 
the land of Midian.’—Exovus 2: 15, 


OSES’ great career began with a mistake, and 
in spite of its remoteness, the story of that 
mistake is strikingly familiar. What it was 

and what it led to it is our purpose here to tell. 

Few men have had a more romantic life. He was a 
child of an enslaved people, who by a singular provi- 
dential arrangement was brought into the family of the 
reigning monarch and became the son of Pharaoh’s 
daughter. He grew to manhood amid the luxury and 
splendour of an Oriental court, and for a long period 
was willing to take his ease. But there came a time 
when he grew discontented. He felt that this was not 
living but mere existence. Idleness displeased him, and 
he wished for a career. He wanted to live and work 
and have a share in the big things. He was unhappy 
and restless because he did not know how to get out of 
his gilded cage. | 

And many young Americans are feeling this same 
discontent. Young people are idealists; in a vague sort 
of way they desire to share in what is great, noble, 
unselfish; their discontents are often protests against 
idleness and ease, a passionate longing for a share in 
the world’s work. They are like Browning’s Christian. 
They do not wish to be 


65 


66 EDUCATION OF MOSES 


“* * * left in God’s contempt apart, 
With ghastly smooth life, dead at heart, 
Tame in earth’s paddock as her preze.” 


Such a life would be a cruel distortion of destiny. 
When young people feel the shame of this life, often 
planned by foolish parents, their discontent increases 
until they begin to look about them for a way of 
breaking out of Pharaoh’s court and escaping the 
paddock life. 

This was Moses’ feeling—how to escape the paddock 
life—when he took that momentous walk which led to 
his temporary undoing. He looked about him that day 


with open eyes. He had often seen this thing, an 


Egyptian taskmaster beating a Hebrew slave, and prob- 
ably had stifled any feelings of sympathy by saying to 
himself that if slaves will not work they must be pun- 
ished, else how get the world’s work done? Perhaps he 
congratulated himself on being fortunate enough to 
escape being reared as a Hebrew. He was a child of 
destiny, and known asa prince. But that morning such 


reflections did not please him. He was looking on that’ 


sight with other eyes, eyes opened by his discontent. 
He looked upon his brethren and considered their bur- 
dens. His brethren? That was a new thought, and for 
the first time in his life he felt that their burdens were 
his burdens. What had he ever done to earn his bread ? 
What had he contributed to the world’s work? Why 
should he live by the toil of others, and spend his days 
in idleness while other men, his brothers—bone of his 
bone and flesh of his flesh—were beaten by taskmas- 
ters? This was the beginning of responsibility, the 
moment when he came of age, when he felt himself a 
full grown man. 

And this, too, is common in our time. There are few 


DISCIPLINE OF THE DESERT 67 


finer moments in life that that of the beginning of re- 
sponsibility. At such a time a man forms the deliberate 
and passionate determination to get out of Pharaoh’s 
court, to escape at any cost the shame of the paddock 
life. And it is one of the best indications of the moral 
health of these times that multitudes of well favoured 
people are beginning to awake to their responsibility for 
_ the social and spiritual condition of men. The burden 
of all, our brethren, is felt to be our burden. Why, 
after all, should there be idlers and burden bearers 

under the same social system ? 
- Moses felt this keenly, and it was an ennobling feel- 
ing; only he made a serious mistake in going about the 
business, and that mistake opens up an interesting line 
of reflection. His mistake was this: He assumed that 
a sudden birth of social passion automatically equipped 
him with power for social leadership. He supposed 
that to feel that a thing ought to be done was the same 
thing as to have power to accomplish it effectively. 
This false social system was responsible for two evils: 
On the one hand it fostered idlers like himself; and on 
the other hand burden bearers like his brethren. The 
thing to be done then was to destroy the social system. 
Here stands the Egyptian taskmaster, the visible sym- 
bol of the evil thing. Then kill the Egyptian, and the 
thing is done. By so doing he thinks he will end the 
_ oppression of his brethren, and gain power to lead them 
to a better social condition. He just took it for granted 
that a man without actual knowledge of human nature 
and with no experience of practical life could in a mo- 
ment of social enthusiasm acquire leadership in the 
world’s affairs. It is a common mistake, and he was 
soon bitterly aware of it. 

Shortly after this impulsive action he endeavours to 


68 EDUCATION OF MOSES 


interfere in a matter between his brethren, and then 
learns that he has no power to influence them. ‘ Who 
made you a judge over us?”’ they asked. Furthermore, 
his crime is known to Pharaoh. He had not considered 
this before, but now he realises that he not only lacks 
power to help his brethren, but that he must leave the 
country, perhaps forever, and abandon any hope of ever 
influencing his people. Hence he flees, a broken and 
discouraged young man, far from the haunts of the 
world, and loses himself in the heart of the desert 
of Midian. ; | 

This, too, is quite familiar. The moral idealism and 
social passion of this time are profoundly interesting. 
In some respects we are living in the greatest era of 
human history. This feeling of responsibility for our 
brothers under all conditions of existence is one of the 
finest characteristics of our age. The land is full of 
adventurers, many of them young, who are but lately 
escaped from Pharaoh’s court, who still remember the 
vanity and futility of the paddock life, whose interest in 
the social problem is profoundly suggestive. For the. 
first time in their lives they are feeling the invigoration 
of responsibility. ‘The experience is novel, glorious, 
heroic. Nothing could tempt them back to the old 
life. They have definitely broken with their idle past; 
they despise the paddock and long for the arena. 
But they usually make the same mistake that Moses 
made. They confound the birth of social passion with 
equipment for social leadership. Few wish to follow, 
to learn, to gain power through discipline; most of 
them wish to lead. They do not know how to wait. 
And this is the more impressive because many of these 
young idealists are full of religious zeal. Like Moses, 
they are going about the business of solving some of 





DISCIPLINE OF THE DESERT 69 


the most complex problems in an unreflective and 
passionate way. 

We all feel the prevailing discontent. It is every- 
where. People are dissatisfied and restless without 
knowing why. But the discontent of the time is not 
that of a decaying and disenchanted aristocracy, but 
rather that of an adolescent and adventurous democ- 
racy. Such discontent is usually a sign of progress. 
But this form of discontent more than any other kind 
needs discipline. Of itself it lacks balance, caution, 
and sanity. It lives in passionate feelings rather 
than in constructive intellectual conceptions; it is 
fruitful of vast mistake and final futility, unless it 
is sobered by real knowledge and experience. Young 
America is no more fit for leadership in this business 
of world emancipation than was Moses before his 
desert experience. 

It is worth while to consider more in detail some of 
the prevailing misconceptions of the problem before us. 
The presence of such misconceptions shows the neces- 
sity of the desert discipline. 

1. A misconception of education. We usually act 
on the supposition that if we tell the people what they 
ought to do they will do it. Moses thought so. He as- 
sumed if he told his brethren what they should do they 
would do it. But had Moses ever stopped to ask 
whether he knew what ought to be done? Had he ever 
considered whether he knew what was meant by right? 
Did he know the temper and problems of his time? 
Did he understand human nature as it is? What real 
equipment had he? A profound discontent with an 
aimless life, and a rather vague feeling of responsibility 
for others—this and nothing more. He was less fitted 
to help those Jews than the humblest slave among them, 


70 EDUCATION OF MOSES 


Yet in this restless democracy of ours, where every man 
is striving for personal significance, the idea seems to 
prevail that, in a multitude of meetings and campaigns 
for publicity upon all sorts of subjects, the good thing 
needed to be done will be done. Year by year, hosts of 
beardless boys are pouring out of Pharaoh’s court, with 
the perfume of the paddock life still upon their gar- 
ments, who are telling the big world what it ought to do 
to be saved, with never a suspicion of their unfitness 
and incompetence Need they then be surprised that 
the world turns upon them and asks: “ Who made you 
a judge over us?”’ 

Nothing more painfully illustrates the evil of this 
misconception than the amazing publicity now given to 
sex matters, the exploitation of the social evil, the dis- 
cussion of such subjects in mixed assemblies, and the 
even more questionable practice of moving picture de- 
lineations and dramatic performances, the idea being 
that to expose the evil is to destroy it, that people need 
only to be told what is right in order to get them to do 
right. How little such people know of human nature, 
how poorly acquainted they are with the human prob- 
lem. No one will deny that a wise treatment of such 
subjects in the light of real knowledge will do good ; but 
the haste and utter incompetence of this propaganda, as 
it is usually carried on, are fruitful of a vast corruption 
of society. The very worst attempt to suppress vice is 
to turn it over to undisciplined minds. 

2. A misconception of legislation. The stubborn 
refusal of human nature to do right, when it knows 
what right is, leads to the idea that it must be helped to 
right ways by the aid of legislation. The favourite 
theme of our democracy is freedom. Freedom is what 
all men wish for, some attain, and few deserve. Free- 


DISCIPLINE OF THE DESERT 71 


dom is not the gift of democracy, but the goal and pos- 
sible achievement of democracy; and yet how can free- 
dom better show itself, men think, than in the making 
of laws; and when the law is supposed to.be an expres- 
sion of the sovereign will of the people will it not cor- 
rect all evils and encourage all good things? At any 
rate we seem to think so. 

That law is a power in itself is a favourite delusion 
of democracy, and this delusion has never had more in- 
fluence than here in America. We act upon the as- 
sumption that to get a law on the statute books is the 
same thing as to get it enforced. And what is our 
favourite method of procedure? First we get the law 
passed, then we elect a man to enforce the law, then we 
organise voluntary associations—civic leagues, reform 
associations, and the like—to force the man we have 
elected to enforce the law. Then when we are con- 
vinced that even this is going to fail, we get together in 
the exercise of our freedom and protest. Then we em- 
body our protest in another law. And so the amusing 
process begins where it started. This is movement 
without progress, the merry-go-round of American 
legislation. 

3. A misconception of the Church. Many are be- 


ginning to question the efficacy of the legislative pro- 


gram. ‘They are beginning to suspect that, after all, 
public sentiment is the power behind the law, and that 
it will require something more potent than education to 
develop sentiment in favour of righteousness, and so 
now society is turning more than in former times to the 
Church and demanding what it is going to do about the 
matter. If it be the custodian of the Divine law and 
the keeper of the conscience why does it not get about 
the business of setting the world right? Why does it 


72 EDUCATION OF MOSES 


not get down into the ruck of things and kill that 
brutal Egyptian? 

This demand is usually made from the wrong point 
of view. The adventurer is too much in a hurry to ask 
what the Church is doing and has done about the mat- 
ter. He is so poorly informed on the real trouble that 
he can learn little from the fundamental testimony of 
the Church. He does not know that where there is no 
vision the people perish ; where there is no abiding faith 
in authority, man lacks power to arrest the downward 
tendency of the race. Instead of setting himself to un- 
derstand that by the Gospel the Church is putting into 
human nature a new power, he insists that the Church — 
in its membership and influence align itself with his 
favourite party, organisation, or movement; it may be 
some socialistic program, it may be some reform or- 
ganisation, it may be some wild scheme for bringing to 
pass an immediate Utopia. And if the Church will not 
da this, then the Church must go. 

The question of questions among such poorly in- 
formed people is an economic rather than a spiritual - 
question. They seek to change environment rather than 
regenerate human nature. The demand is, usually lim- 
ited to a division of the inheritance. Again we hear the 
words: “ Speak to my brother that he divide the in- 
heritance with me.” They forget perchance that covet- 
ousness in the heart may explain the economic situation 
far better than this superficial diagnosis. 

People who fall under the evil influence of these mis- 
conceptions are not confined to outsiders, but such mis- 
apprehensions are very common among people within 
the Church. While the Gospel is working with causes 
stich enthusiasts expend their energies on effects and the 
study of symptoms. Moses did not realise the religious 


DISCIPLINE OF THE DESERT 73 


aspect of the question he was dealing with. He thought 
only of a social revolution—kill the Egyptian and the 
thing is done—forgetting that the real bondage of 
these people was the bondage of sin, the bondage of 
ignorance of God. The fatal lack of our time is igno- 
rance of God. 

Strip off the veneer of social and religious talk and 
you will find underneath that the ruling principle of the 
age is largely one of material values, of disputes about 
the division of the inheritance. The young adventurer 
does not know that he is facing a deep and organic 
spiritual disease and that he is more in need of a sound 
theology than of a perfect social theory. 

But Moses’ mistake was not fatal. When he slew the 
Egyptian he was on the way to the burning bush; but 
between those two events lay the long years of desert 
discipline, and that is the outstanding value of the story 
for our time. We, too, may be on the way to the burn- 
ing bush, but we shall never understand the vision, nor 
solve the problem of human betterment until we, like 
Moses, have experienced the discipline of the desert. 

George Gissing says: “ More than half a century of 
existence has taught me that most of the wrong and 
folly which darken earth is due to those who cannot 
possess their souls in patience, that most of the good 
which saves mankind from destruction comes of life 
that is led in thoughtful stillness.” 

Ah, yes, and how little do we know how to appreciate 
the life that is led in “‘ thoughtful stillness.” To us wha 
live most in the moving mass such a life is one of stag- 
nation, of seeming idleness; and yet until we can ap- 
preciate such a life as this, a life of prayer and faith 
and quiet confidence in God how shall we understand 
Him who “ shall not strive nor cry, and whose voice is 


74 EDUCATION OF MOSES 


not heard in the streets.” Jesus never liked noise. He 
did His best work in stillness, in quiet. And He can 
never work a change in us while our hearts are like 
a noisy street, full of haste, selfishness, and earthly 
discontent. 

Perhaps no man ever seeks the desert. He is usually 
driven into it; and if our humiliating failures, our pain- 
ful reactions, our bitter disappointments do nothing else 
for us, they may become fruitful of great good if they 
drive us from the glare and glitter and noise of the 
modern world into the quiet and stillness of the desert. 
There at any rate we may go apart from the crowd and 
take a just prospect of things; and perhaps we, too, 
may light upon a bush that is not consumed, and renew 
our hope and revive our faith and come back to the 
haunts of men with a Gospel powerful enough to com- 
pel the big world to stop—and listen to Ais: 





V 
THE GLORY IN THE DESERT 


“And Moses said, I will now turn aside, and see this 
great sight, why the bush is not burnt. And when the 
Lord saw that he turned aside to see, God called unto 
him out of the midst of the bush, and said, Moses, Moses. 
And he said, Here am I. And he said, Draw not nigh 
hither: put off thy shoes from off thy feet, for the place 
whereon thou standest ts holy ground.”—Exopus 3: 3-5. 


HE end of discipline is illumination. First 
comes the flight from Egypt, then the long, dull 
years in Midian, and then,—the burning bush. 

To read this story aright, we must cease to think of it 
as a hero tale of long ago, and take it as an example of 
how a man found his God. 

To think of it in this way is to discern certain points 
of contact with our own lives. In the first place, up to 
this point the life of Moses had been full of ups and 
downs. Beginning as the reputed son of Pharaoh’s 
daughter; brought up in the luxury and magnificence 
of an Oriental court, he had, by virtue of a generous 
though mistaken action, been driven into the wilderness 
where he had followed the humble calling of a shep- 
herd. To descend from the position of a prince to that 
of an obscure herdman was a great descent. To most 
men this would seem the end of acareer. All romance, 
poetry and mystery appeared to have departed from 
life. The high expectations of youth had not been real- 


75 


76 EDUCATION OF MOSES 


ised. All hopes seemed to have ended in that dreary 
desert experience. 

In the second place, we who look back on the story 
can see another feature of immense significance. God 
was interested in this man’s experience, although for 
the moment he did not know it. Providence was direct- 
ing his movements, and this desert experience, this 
apparent anti-climax was only a transition stage on the 
way to the fulfillment of a great career. And these two 
features are common to all of us, although we are apt 
to stress the first more than the second. To every man 
who has fully matured, life seems to be made of per- 
plexities. He is sometimes up, and sometimes down, 
but mostly down. No matter how high the promise of 
our youth, eventually we find ourselves in a desert 
where the right way seems lost. We gradually drop 
our illusions, abandon our enthusiasms, and put off 
the stately robes of the prince with which we adorned 
our early manhood, to clothe ourselves in the common 
dress of the unromantic toiler. When we allow such 
thoughts too much influence, we accept ourselves at our 
lowest valuation. It was this common tendency that 
led to the invention of the Scotch proverb: “ Born a 
man and died a grocer.” 

But even our lives have another aspect, although it 
may not be clear. We, too, like Moses, are controlled 
by an overruling providence. <A little retrospective 
thought will show this, and in spite of the eccentric 
aspect of our movements we are bound to admit that 
there is a governing principle revealed in them which is 
working towards an orderly and rational end. Even 
the dullest life at times is illuminated by the sense of 
something great impending; some crisis, some apoca- 
lyptic event which shall change the face of the land- 








GLORY IN THE DESERT 77 


scape and open fresh vistas of opportunity. Such an 
event happened to Moses. The time came when he 
must come to close quarters with God; and the awaken- 
ing came, as it usually does, in the very midst of his 
commonplace world. Caring for his flock in a remote 
part of the wilderness, he is suddenly attracted by a 
burning bush. 

The first impression made on Moses was that Hered in 
the commonplace surroundings of the wilderness was 
something unfamiliar, and unusual. It was not an un- 
common sight to see a fire burning in the desert. It 
might be the camp-fire of a neighbouring shepherd, or 
the evidence of some wandering tribe. It might be the 
sign of a friend or an enemy, but in either case there 
was nothing uncommon or noteworthy in this. Such a 
sight met with the usual reactions, and was dismissed 
from the mind. But there was something peculiar 
about this; it was not that the bush was burning, but 
that it was unconsumed. ‘The fire burned, but the bush 
was not destroyed. Passing like the tongues of angry 
serpents through the foliage of the bush, yet neither 
diminishing its bulk, nor destroying the beauty thereof, 
it was this that attracted the attention of Moses to a 
sight otherwise quite commonplace and familiar. It 
was this that led him to ask: Why is this? As he pon- 
dered the mystery he determined to investigate it. You 
may regard this as a miracle, a wonder if you like, and 
I shall not deny it; but all the same, the point is that 
this unusual thing happened in the midst of a common- 
place experience. 

And what happened to Moses then, happens to us 
now. Life and the world viewed from the outside look 
commonplace, unromantic and familiar. But there is at 
the same time, for those who can see it, an undying 


78 EDUCATION OF MOSES 


fire in the world. ‘There is a living flame of life and 
love and glory, feeding upon human interest, belief, and 
ambition; a fire that surrounds the human personality, 
blesses and enriches human relations, and yet, and here 
is the remarkable thing, so far from consuming men, 
it revives them, renews them, and keeps them tremen- 
dously alive. If you ask an explanation of this wonder, 
they have their reason. ‘They will tell you that they 
have found a Saviour; like Peter’s friends, they will be 
able to give a reason for the hope that is in them by 
saying they have sanctified Christ in their hearts as 
Lord; and that in spite of ups and downs, in spite of 
changes and decay, this gracious fire which burns 
within their hearts, neither tires nor wearies, but actu- 
ally renews and strengthens. Every disciple of Jesus 
Christ, no matter in what dreary place he lives, is a 
burning bush. If one doubt the truth of this let him 
read history. 

First, you discern the presence in his worl of a fire 
that consumes and wastes; the fire of lust and greed 
and sin. This is the fire that you see playing amid the 
ruins of empires and civilisations. It burns the tissues 
of the body, it sears the surfaces of the mind, it con- 
sumes the vitality of the spirit. Men acknowledge the 
truth of this when history is allowed to become the 
record of noise, and destruction and waste. It is upon 
the doings of this fire that the daily press lives, for 


what men call news is simply the roaring and crackling 


of the flames that burn and consume. But look more 
intently upon the same world and you see another fire 
burning, an undying fire of faith, love and loyalty, 
flaming up in the face of saints and martyrs, illumi- 
nating the preaching of prophets and apostles, and 
burning with a steady glow in the face of Jesus Christ. 





_——— on? 








a ee, 





GLORY IN THE DESERT 79 


It is the fire that burns but does not consume; it is 
upon this living flame that religion, the Church and the 
peace of the soul immortal depend for their existence; 
and it is from the presence of this mysterious fire in 
human history that the spiritual hopes of mankind 
derive their justification. As that flame broke out and 
illuminated the desert experience of Moses, so today it 
is the life of God in man’s soul as the assurance of the 
presence in this fantastic world of material forces of 
something which does not disappoint, and in which we 
may confide. 

When Moses realised this, he turned aside to see the 
great sight, why the bush was not consumed. That is 
to say, the perception of the mysterious features of this 
familiar sight moved him to investigate, to inquire, to 
act. God is always looking for the man who asks 
How? When a man takes life seriously enough to ask 
the reasons of things, God is ready to grant him his 
desire. Moses wanted to know why the bush was not 
consumed. That is our point of contact with spiritual 
reality today. All about us I seem to see the evidences 
of this undying fire. Here is something that cheers and 
encourages ; something that comforts and strengthens; 
something that cleanses the soul of its waste, and gives 
peace and assurance to troubled hearts. What is the 
meaning of this blessedness of family life; this sacra- 
mental love of women and little children; the illuminat- 
ing power of the Holy Scriptures, and the invigorating 
influence of religious fellowship? ‘There is something 
in the world that has opened heaven to homesick souls; 
something that teaches stammering tongues to speak 
plainly, something that breaks the prison doors of the 
heart and releases man’s pent up thoughts in prayer and 
praise; something that illuminates the path of life; 


80 EDUCATION OF MOSES 


what is this? Everywhere do I seem to feel the hospi- 
table heat of this tremendous fire; it glows upon the 
altar of loyal hearts, it flames up in the sterling faith 
of men; and the invariable thing is that nowhere is the 
fire going out. Neither does it waste nor hurt that 
upon which it feeds. And when I feel this about me, 
I can but say to my spirit: follow this fire. Search and 
inquire what it may mean to sath Question it until it 
gives up its secret. 

This is God’s way of drawing men. He does not 
approach us with a theory of fire, burdened with ab- 
stract speculations, but He lights the fire in human 
hearts; He makes it break out in the wilderness and 
challenges us to turn aside and see why the bush is not 
consumed. ‘This is the essence of faith, for faith at 
heart is adventure. It is intellectual curiosity inspired 
by the desperate need of cold hearts in search of 
warmth, and lonely souls in need of ‘companionship. 
That is why the appeal of Jesus is essentially a chal- 
lenge to our thinking powers, for Jesus can mean 
nothing to indifferent natures. He is always looking 
for the man who is willing to say—‘‘ How?” Jesus 
is most real to living minds; to minds that have the 
courage of intellectual curiosity. Had Moses not 
turned aside to see, he had missed everything. Had 
he said: This is just another fire, some wandering 
shepherd, with whom I have no concern; or had he 
reasoned, What have I to do with this? My life is 
over and done with. There will never be any change 
in this drab outlook upon the wilderness. I am just 
a commonplace herdman and need expect no, sur- 
prises, then, I say, Moses had missed everything. 
But the man at heart was keenly alive; he was intel- 
lectually curious, because he was spiritually sensitive, 





GLORY IN THE DESERT 81 


and when he turned aside to see, something happened 
to him. 

_ God spoke to him in a language that he could under- 
stand. The mystery of the bush yielded something of 
its meaning, and he heard a voice speaking to him, a 
familiar voice, yet strangely new. What an awakening 
moment this was. He knew all about Abraham and the 
patriarchs, and the covenant promises made long ago to 
his people. It was a determination to identify himself 
with the promises and the chosen people, that had been 
the cause of his exile. Down in Egypt he had been 
taught the history of his people, for his mother had 
seen to that ; but now in the long wandering in the wil- 
derness this had seemed an old, old, story. What hope 
had he of wonders in this dreary place, when he had 
heard no great voices even amid the luxury of 
Pharaoh’s court? ‘The God of Abraham, Isaac, and 
Jacob, the hope and joy of his race had these many 
years been silent and would speak no more; and sud- © 
denly, as if by a miracle, God speaks to him out of 
the bush, calls him by name, and under the spell 
of that Voice his whole history passed before him: 
his exile, his heartache, his disillusionment, his pain 
and his longing, and above all the feeling that had 
steadied him through the whole of the discipline that 
this simply could not be the end. Somewhere and 
somehow God must break in on his soul. And this 
is what happened to him, when the Voice called him 
by name. ? 

Let us not miss the significance of this, for a man’s 
name stands for the lonely mystery of individuality. 
We have all felt it, this isolation in the midst of the 
crowd. There is something incommunicable about each 
of us. To bea person, shut in with our own thoughts, 


82 EDUCATION OF MOSES 


only partially knowing ourselves, and yet feeling some- 
thing rising within us that demands expression. We 
are strangers, dear outsiders, even to those who love 
us. It is not our worst, but often our very best that we 
cannot express. We have no language nor speech to 
tell it, yet until it is told we can have no peace. And 
now this voice of God, calling Moses by name, enfold- 
ing him in the deep mystery of existence, making him 
aware that at the heart of the universe there was a 
Friend, understanding and compassionate, who had 
even in that long desert obscurity never forgotten him. 
It was the great moment when the man found his God, 


when the old traditions, the ancient hopes awoke into ~ 


life and revealed at their center a Person, a Friend. It 
is this all men seek. To confess that you are lonely and 
friendless ; that this attractive outside world is for the 
spirit a waterless desert, and then suddenly to come 
upon a fire burning in the wilderness; and question it 
because you want peace and compassion and forgive- 


ness, is to have God speak to you out of the bush, this, 
I say, is the moment of your being understood. It is - 


the way man finds his God. ‘There are deep, sweet 
mysteries in the heart of the rose, but they have no 
power of realisation until the winds of the spring 
whisper to them, and the gracious kindness of the sum- 
mer sun warms them into life. It is then the rose 
opens and unfolds. What the sun and wind are to the 
rose, the undying fire is to man’s heart. We do not 
suspect what capacities are hidden within these pent up 
lives, so cold and cheerless and lonely in the desert, until 
the gracious heats of this tremendous fire kindle them 
into hopes and ambitions; but we must take the initia- 
tive, draw nigh and question the bush why it is not con- 
sumed. This Moses did; and when God spoke to him, 


GLORY IN THE DESERT 83 


two things happened: the birth of reverence and the 
expansion of life’s meaning. 

Moses was told to remove his shoes, for the place 
whereon he stood was holy ground. ‘That is the first 
radical change in the human spirit, when a man finds 
his God. It is to realise the sanctity of the common 
life. Still it required a strong measure of faith to 
believe this about the wilderness. How could this 
lonely region, a place of dreary toil and unrelieved 
monotony, take on the character of sacredness? Yet in 
his old age Moses confessed the glory in the desert 
when he spoke of the “ goodwill of Him that dwelt in 
the bush.” This acknowledgment, the strength of a 
patient following, is the confirmation of an experience 
which had taught him that no incident of man’s pil- 
grimage can be common or unclean where God dwells. 
It was communion with God, and his capacity for 
participating in that fellowship that transformed the 
desert. | 

It is the passionate desire of the human heart to have 
a sacred place; a place of retirement into which the 
- noisy world cannot come. The finest elements of spir- 
itual experience cannot bear too much exposure. There 
is peril in the glare, the spirit shrinks from the “ garish 
day.”’ We all have our reticences and reserves, for no 
man can show the whole of himself to another. This 
often develops the habit of introspection, wherein the 
mind wearily turns over its contents, until the whole 
becomes shop worn, like a counter of delicate fabrics at 
the end of a bargain day. Introspection increases lone- 
liness, but also arouses the need for disclosure. The 
whole world is in search of a good listener. That is 
why man wants a sacred place; a place where the spirit 
may disclose its secrets without fear of misunderstand- 


84 EDUCATION OF MOSES 


ing. When one finds in this closet life the opportunity 
for communion with a sympathetic and understanding 
nature, introspection is changed into confession, and the 
spirit eases itself of its burden. That is what Moses 
found here. We need not inquire too curiously into his 
heavy thoughts during the long exile in the wilderness, 
but note that in the dreary and lonely place One came to 
him in whom he could confide, and thus the desert blos- 
somed as a rose, and the open spaces which once gave 
no shelter to the sensitive spirit became a sanctuary 
of God. 


We need to understand the sacredness of common 


life. We are still inclined to identify God with unusual — 


happenings, with strange or splendid episodes; we have 
yet to realise that God is manifest in the steady flame 


of love and faith which illuminates the toil worn faces 


in the common round of daily duties. We must cease 
to measure our possibilities by the senses, and look for 
their fulfillment in spiritual relations with the ever — 
present God. By some such intention do we acknowl- — 
edge the presence of the Spirit in the undying fire - 
which glorifies the lives of those about us; and from 
_ this rebirth of reverence will come an immense expan- 
sion of life’s meaning. 4 

Moses, the disillusioned herdsman, who had long — 
believed himslef forgotten, is called to be the leader — 

of God’s people. A sense of mission, of predestination 

possessed him, and he became aware that life was just — 
beginning ; for the rebirth of reverence which increases — 
one’s sense of Divine reality, always expands one’s con- — 
ception of responsibility. As Amos puts it: ‘ The © 
Lord God hath spoken, who can but prophesy?” To — 
know God well is to become aware of His need of us; 
to translate the experience of His fellowship into ser- — 





GLORY IN THE DESERT 85 


vice, and to see in the world around us, the field of 
that service. If we are but slightly aware of capacity 
and opportunity it means that we are ignorant of God. 
We are forgetting that Jesus came to cast fire upon the 
earth; but if Jesus is the fire, man is His bush. If we 
are to augment the sense of life’s meaning we must 
face its demands with faith; we must look at the ordi- 

nary tasks, that so often become monotonous and com- 
- monplace as manifestations of the love and devotion, 
which first illuminated the face of Christ, and now 
shines by reflected light from the faces of His children. 
To attempt this in the spirit of adventure is to find the 
meaning of life; it is to put an original interpretation 
on its familiar experiences, and when challenged in this 
bold fashion it rewards us by granting our demands. 

The great fire is burning around us today, and if we 
_ come within the scope of its hospitable heats we shall 
experience, even in desert darkness, the companionship 
of Him in Whose Face hath flamed for man’s salvation 
the light of the knowledge of the glory of God: 


“While I see day succeed the deepest night, 
How can I speak but as I know?—my speech 
Must be, throughout the darkness, ‘ lt will end; 
The light that did burn, will burn,” 


cyeaia! 
THE DANGER OF THE DESERT 


“And Moses said unto God, Who am I that I should 
go unto Pharaoh, and that I should bring forth the chil- 
dren of Israel out of Egypt? ’?—Exopus 3: 11. 


vision of the burning bush should have displayed _ 
such extreme reluctance in putting into practice the 
lesson he learned from it. The burning bush was the 
Heavenly vision. It played the same part in the call of 
Moses as Paul’s vision did in his, yet Moses hesitated 
to obey. | 4 
Recall for a moment the reason why Moses went into — 
the desert. It came from a mistaken application of a — 
noble passion. He determined to break away from the © 
killing luxury and splendid idleness of Pharaoh’s court; — 
and the impulse to do this came from a sudden realisa- q 


fi is passing strange that a man who understood the 


tion of his racial identity with his oppressed brethren. 


But he made the mistake, common to youth, of sup- a 
posing that the birth of social passion automatically | 
equipped a man for leadership in social service; and by — 
killing the Egyptian taskmaster he got himself into — 
such an embarrassing situation that flight into the wil- — 


derness was the only remedy. The value of his long 4 
stay was most important. He sobered and disciplined 
his passions, he cultivated the admirable habit of re- 


flection, he improved his knowledge of God and of 
himself, P| 


86 








DANGER OF THE DESERT 87 


But the time had now come when it was necessary to 
return to his people, if his life was to amount to any- 
thing. The crisis came in the vision of the burning 
bush. The value of the desert discipline appears in the 
ability of the man to turn aside and see the great sight. 
That was the climax of his spiritual education, and the 
next logical step would have been obedience. But just 
here the man hesitates. And this fact shows us that 
while the discipline of the desert has its advantages, it 
also has its dangers. He brings no less than five serious 
objections to his going to Pharaoh. First he pleads un- 
fitness—Who am I that I should go? Then he urges 
his lack of knowledge—What shall I say? ‘Then he 
brings forward the probable unbelief of the people. 
Besides, he pleads, he is a man of slow speech, without 
eloquence or persuasive power. And, most serious of 
all, he suggests the propriety of sending someone else. 
Perhaps the dazzling light of the burning bush has hid- 
den these things from us, mayhap his splendid future 
has made us indifferent to these desert experiences; yet 
it is clear that the man’s career had reached a crisis, 
- that everything would depend upon how he responded 
to his call. 

Why did he hesitate? Why was he so unwilling to 
obey the Heavenly vision? Its explanation is para- 
doxical. The education necessary to equip us with ade- 
quate knowledge of God and life may, if too prolonged, 
expose us to the dangers of inertia and unfitness for 
response. There is a very delicate balance between 
vision and action. Small things may disturb this bal- 
ance and expose us to ruin. While in Egypt the man’s 
knowledge of God was less than that of the wilderness, 
_ but his power of action was greater; but here the very 
weight of knowledge was seriously interfering with his 


88 EDUCATION OF MOSES 


power of action. Sometimes the most zealous and 
active man is so because his knowledge of the cause he 
is working for is small. This is the zeal. of youth 
untempered by experience. But, on the other hand, 
knowledge often paralyses zeal. A fool’s power of 
action is often greater than that of a wise man. And 
while the desert discipline was necessary for Moses, 
the danger lay in the paralysis of the power of action by 
excess of knowledge. 3 

The truth is that his spiritual life had grown self- 
centered. The reality of the needs of his people and the 


passion which had driven him from Pharaoh’s court — 


had faded out, and his life had settled down to pro- 
longed brooding upon the mystery of God. His reli- 
gion was more a matter of exalted thought and feeling 
and less of passion and activity. In the beginning this 
had given rest to his troubled soul, it had refined and 
exalted his spiritual sensibilities, but latterly this same 
habit of reflection tended to become an end in itself and 
to exclude any influence that might interfere with his 


quiet and drive him out upon the big world with its” 


hard work and service. The vision of the bush in the 
first instance was an irritation, an interference with his 
quiet. He was like a man who lay too long in bed of 
mornings. He was about to become a spiritual slug- 
gard, “ Who am I that I should go unto Pharaoh?” 


We see this strange thing in the spiritual life of to- 


day. On the one hand the world is full—too full it 


seems to us—of men whose zeal is out of all proportion — 


to their knowledge. Religious and social adventurers 
are going forth to battle upon impulse of one sort or 
another whose doings suggest even to the man in the 
street that they are novices at the business. They are 
entirely indifferent to guiding principles and equally 





DANGER OF THE DESERT 89 


careless of their destination. They are exceedingly con- 
fused as to terminal facilities. Their motto might well 
be that of the facetious American: “ We do not know 
where we are going, but we are on the way.” Anyone 
can see that these people would be better for a period of 
silence, that the chief thing needed is reflection and 
quiet. Nothing short of a desert experience will fit 
them for real usefulness, for their unfitness for perma- 
nent service is due to lack of spiritual knowledge and 
personal discipline. They do not know God; they are 
poorly informed as to themselves; they tend to become 
extremists, faddists, and the like. 

Those who take a more serious view of life, who feel 
that before a man begins a work he should count the 
cost or before he starts on a journey he should consider 
his end and goal, may easily point out their faults and 
suggest the propriety of a wilderness discipline. But 
there is another side. The Church is undoubtedly full 
of people whose knowledge of God is great; they bear 
in their lives the marks of the wilderness; they have 
learned how to dream and brood and reflect. Some 
even have seen the burning bush and heard the great 
voice calling; but nevertheless many of these finely 
equipped lives are painfully lacking in adaptability. 
They do not easily adjust themselves to their time. 
They do not respond to the calls of the day to come up 
and help as many think they should. Toward the fresh 
movements of life, the new endeavours toward social 
and spiritual betterment, they manifest an attitude of 
indifference, and when these new things press hard 
upon them they become restless, unhappy, betray irri- 
tation. They advance one reason after another why 
they should not respond. At bottom their superior 
knowledge of God and undoubted loyalty to Christ and 


"Ba, ; 


90 EDUCATION OF MOSES 


the Church make them shirkers in the face of practical 
applications of this knowledge to their own time. 

In these two classes appear the two extreme views of 
personal development which have ever divided men into 
groups and furnished material for social philosophers. 
One is known as collectivism, the other as individual- 
ism. ‘The collectivist believes that he realises himself in 
the mass movements of life. In the Church he gets the 
quickest sense of personal significance from being in the 
crowd, from being vocally on the side of popular moral 
and religious reforms. This man is fundamentally de- 
pendent upon what others think of him for what he 


thinks of himself. He can value himself only when he ~ 
is in the moving mass. Solitude of any sort is stagna- 


tion, the paralysis of his mental and moral processes. 


He simply cannot stand still and think. Alone he is. 


nothing, in the mass everything. | 
Such a man’s signal virtue will be capacity for qitick 
response, for immediate action, but his ever-present 


peril will be instability, fickleness, the speedy exhaustion — 
of interest, and consequent reaction. The great move- - 


ments which have swept over the Church and nation in 
recent years have left upon the wayside multitudes of 
men and women who are now in a thoroughly reaction- 
ary mood. Their capacity for service has been ex- 
hausted because they were caught in the vanguard and 


hurried along into positions which they could not hold. 


Their great need is to sit down and think and brood and 
pray. They need to get acquainted with God. More 
than anything else they need the discipline of the desert. 

The individualist, on the other hand, realises himself 
in quite another fashion. He does not care for the 
crowd; he is naturally suspicious of the moving mass; 


he is always critical of sudden changes of front. He. 





: Trareias 
Pe om, BE 
ed 





DANGER OF THE DESERT 91 


seeks personal significance, not in what others think of 
him, but in what he thinks of himself—his appreciation 
of character and intention. Such a man will naturally 
think for himself; reflection will be easy to him. His 
great capacity will be stability, a moral invariability, an 
independence of shifting movements about him. His 
character will show itself in a certain fixity of position, 
a sure superiority to popular clamour, a certain enjoy- 
ment of temporary unpopularity, and a rather irritating 
indifference to surface opinions of all kinds. Mix con- 
science and devotion to Bible and Church with these ele- 
ments, leaven it with spiritual knowledge and grace, and 
you get a peculiarly strong type of man, a man capable 
of leadership and possessing staying power. 


The peculiar danger of this man is in his preference | 


for his own ways. If the external conditions of life 
were constant, if the movements of the world about him 
remained the same, this man would perhaps become the 
ideal citizen and Christian. But, as a matter of fact, 
the movements of life are never constant. They are as 
changeable as the waves of the sea, particularly in an 
adolescent democracy such as ours, and the attitude 
such a man may take and often does take toward the 
new movements, ideals, and concepts of the time is one, 
I will not say of wilful disobedience, but certainly of 
hesitation. The very glare of the bush may blind him 
to the practical significance of much that is about him. 
This man, more than any other type, is susceptible to 
the danger of the desert. 

He may, for one thing, become a religious epicure. 
Such a man tends to keep his emotions or opinions in a 
state of isolation. He may make religious feeling an 
end in itself and insist upon repeating his emotions in 
every act of worship. His passion is to keep the service 


92 EDUCATION OF MOSES 


just as it was and has been from the beginning, whether 
the “other man”’ is edified or not. His epicureanism 
may take an intellectual form and he become a sermon 
taster, in love with the enticing words of man’s wisdom, 
or he may develop into a defender of doctrine and be- 
lieve, sincerely believe, that the very words and phrases 
of his doctrine are essential to the Gospel message, so 
that his mind is closed to all communications of truth 
that do not come by the well worn channels. ‘This is the 
peril that ever waits to defeat the ends of orthodoxy. 
Such a man may become a rank outsider, a looker-on 
upon other men’s matters, and so break the connection 
between his thoughts and the currents of life about him. 
The great difficulty, of course, is to keep the balance 
between zeal and knowledge. Permanent work depends 
at bottom on judgments of value, in which a man is 
compelled to decide between opposites. This develops 
in thoughtful men the faculty of the judge. But the ju- 
dicial temperament is usually fatal to the temperament 
of the advocate. And upon advocates rather than 


judges rests the responsibility of advance movements. * 


The danger is that the thoughtful man will prolong 
reflection until his mental habits become those of a 
judge rather than an advocate. He thereby loses his 
power of movement. Such a habit, when it becomes 
fixed, especially in religious matters, leaves the man, in 
spite of his great personal worth, inert and useless so 
far as advance movements are concerned. When the 
celebrated French sculptor, Rodin, was asked why he 
made his Meditation without arms and legs, he replied: 
*‘ Tt needs none, for the habit of meditation unduly. pro- 
longed tends to balance opposites to such a nicety as to 
prevent decision and so results in complete inertia.” 

The end of this man is usually pessimism. He feels 





DANGER OF THE DESERT 93 


himself out of sympathy with his time. He suffers 
from a self-imposed loneliness. How common a thing 
it is to see such a man a flaming evangelist at twenty- 
five, a pleasing religious philosopher at forty, and a 
gloomy misanthrope at sixty. This is the grave peril 
of the man who thinks too much. It is easy to remind 
the noisy collectivist that a city set on a hill cannot be 
hid, but it is equally important for the individualist to 
remember that a light set under a bushel cannot be seen. 
Reputation—what men think you are—is as influential 
as character—what you know yourself to be. For if 
stability turns upon character, influence—the power to 
market your spiritual products—turns upon reputation. 
A stream may be never so pure, but if men believe it 
contaminated they will not drink of it. A Christian, 
after all, is like a bank; he may be perfectly solvent, but 
if people think otherwise his influence will be strictly 
limited. This was:the peril of Moses, and it is our 
peril. Too long contemplation of the Heavenly vision 
came dangerously near destroying his power to obey it. 

What, then, were the elements in that vision which 
overcame his reluctance? They were two: First, the 
discovery of the nature of God; and second, the corre- 
sponding realisation of the power of human personality. 

He learned what all true men come to learn, that the 
love of God makes itself real in action rather than con- 
templation. Love, active love, was the nature of Deity. 
The High and Lofty One, who inhabits eternity, was 
yet deeply and vitally interested in the human problem. 
He had heard the cry and felt the pain of His people in 
bondage. While Moses was composing psalms in the 
desert God had been suffering with His people in Egypt. 
And that is the great question after all. What does the 
great God think of the human problem? And what is 


94 EDUCATION OF MOSES 


He willing to do to help man in his extremity? This 
great lesson, that God is a living God, that He lives in 
an active love for His fallen people, that He lives in the 
sorrows and the problems of His enslaved children, is 
carried to its fitting climax in the sorrows and suffer- 
ings of our blessed Saviour. No man can contemplate 
that great historic fact, that life of pity, that death for 
sin, that glorious resurrection, without feeling that 
God’s supreme interest in the world is the human prob- 
lem, that nothing human is foreign to Him, that He is 
in no sense an outsider, but one who by His incarnation 


identified Himself with all that concerns man’s life. 


He felt their sorrows then, and He feels them now. - 
This lesson is not to be learned from books, but from 
living, from experience, and that is our burning bush. 
The light of it is breaking out all about us, the world is 
filled with its great illuminating power, if we only had 
wisdom to turn aside and see the great sight. And the 
essential meaning of this fact is this, that such knowl- 


edge of God, of His love and sympathy and passion to ; 
redeem, is absolutely essential to man’s life. Man must ' 


have it. The Jews in bondage required it, and the 
world today requires it. To know the love of God in 
Christ, to realise that this is an active passion and power 
in human life, is the supreme need of the world today. 
Moses could not realise this without discovering the 
power of the human personality to convey this knowl- 
edge to the world. It was a great thing to brood upon 


the mystery of the Eternal in the wilderness, to quiet — 
the spirit in the golden glories and spacious atmosphere 


of that peaceful realm, but it was a greater thing to 


convey the knowledge of the Almighty’s infinite com- — 
passion and purpose to the broken and burdened people — 
in far away Egypt. He felt the question pressing upon — 





DANGER OF THE DESERT 95 


him: How was God to impart this truth unless he 
should go? He needs must have a man to carry it. 
The treasure has ever come in earthen vessels—that is 
the great proof of man’s worth to God. Man can help 
God. By his faith and willingness to be used man has 
been permitted to release the redemptive power to the 
world. As God came to the Israelites by Moses and to 
the Gentiles by the apostles, so He must come to our 
age. A Christian out of contact with men is useless to 
Christ ; a man out of communion with Christ is useless 
to the world. 

Thus we see both the need and the danger of the 
desert experience. We require its discipline to equip us 
with knowledge of God, but this of itself is useless until 
it gets into the channels of life. And there is as great a 
need today for us to rise up and go back into this mod- 
ern Egypt as there was in the ancient times for Moses 
to cast hesitation behind him and plunge into the diffi- 
cult task of delivering the Jews from the hand of 
Pharaoh. 

Today, as then, the Great Voice is calling: ‘‘ Whom 
shall I send? And who will go for us?” And if we 
have well learned the lesson of the desert discipline we 
shall be swift to respond; “ Here am I, send me.” 


VII 
THE POWER OF THE DESERT 


“Go thou near, and hear all that Jehovah our God 
shall say: and speak thou unto us all that Jehovah our 
God shall speak unto thee; and we will hear it, and 
do it.’—-DEUTERONOMY 5:27, | 


HESE, words were spoken to Moses by the 
Hebrews when they keenly felt the need of a. 
revelation from God. They embody a confes- 

sion of his power as a prophet and a tacit acceptance of 
his leadership. 

This incident suggests a contrast with Moses’ first 
attempt at leadership. Then we saw a discontented 
youth, passionately attacking a problem he did not 
understand, and getting rejected for his pains. We 
hear the scornful words of his associates: “ Who made - 
you a judge over us?” and we see the young man, 


panic-stricken, fleeing the court of Pharaoh and losing , © 


himself in the desert of Midian. Here, on the contrary, 
the people are ready to accept his leadership. They 
recognise him to be a man of spiritual insight, clean- 
ness of life, wise, sane, and well balanced. He is a man 
capable of communion with God. They feel the need 
of a mediator, an interpreter of the Divine will. What 
has accomplished this mighty change? Once again we 
must go back to the desert for an answer. 

The desert experience of Moses falls into three 
stages. The first stage was one of discipline; the sec- 


96 





POWER OF THE DESERT 97 


ond, a stage of remarkable escape from its dangers; 
the third stage is an illustration of the power of that 
experience. 

For the exercise of a great spiritual influence over 
others a man requires two things: First, his testimony 
must be based upon an assured reality. He must be 
sure of God. He must not only know God, but know 
that he knows. Secondly, he must have a power in 
himself to get his testimony believed. Moses had both 
of these qualifications. The inevitable impression made 
upon the people was that he knew God. The other im- 
pression quickly followed; they were sure they could 
best reach the Divine purposes through the leadership 
of Moses. Man’s life has two sides, a fruit side and a 
root side. Men judge us by the fruits we bear. The 
fruit of Moses’ desert experience is seen in his power 
over the people. He could inspire confidence in his 
testimony. But the fruit we bear is determined by the 
soil in which life is planted. The peculiar power of 

_Moses over the people was not that of a military or 
political leader, but of a spiritual man. He had quali- 
fied as a mediator and interpreter for God. This power 

-is derived from the root side of his life, from the ac- 
cumulations of his forty years in the wilderness of 
Midian. 

The acceptance of Moses’ leadership was due first of 
all to the fact that the Hebrews were conscious of their 
deepest religious need, the need of a revelation from 
God. ‘There is a profound philosophical meaning in 
the proverb: “‘ Where there is no vision the people 
perish.” Where there is no faith in God’s authority 
over human life, sufficient to influence conduct, man 
casts off restraint and so perishes. The French Revo- 
lution furnishes a classic illustration of this truth. Re- 


98 EDUCATION OF MOSES 


ligion is the bond of human society as well as the 
conservator of man’s moral life. The ages of history 
in which men have least realised the Divine authority 
have been periods of disaster. On the contrary, wher- 
ever Divine authority has been clearly recognised it has 
produced eras of happiness and progress. _ 

The reality of God was the supreme fact of life, 
which the Hebrews were just beginning to recognise. 
After centuries of ignorance and spiritual blindness the 
tremendous fact had been suddenly thrust upon them. 
That smoking mountain, that mysterious but compel- 
ling Voice from the clouds had confronted them with 
the fact of God. They felt the mighty compulsion of ~~ 
the unseen ; they awoke to the deep and tender mystery 
which enveloped their lives, and out of it came a real- 
isation of the mystery within themselves, of unfulfilled - 
desire and spiritual need and consciousness of sin. The 
first effect of this new knowledge was an increase of 
discomfort, an augmented fear; and from this fear 


came an intensified sense of incapacity. Of themselves 


they could not commune with God. Who could look - 
upon God and live? Who among them dared approach 


the smoking mountain? They were like the Jews of & | 
Isaiah’s time, who, when they realised the signal 


vengeance of the Almighty upon the Assyrian host, 
went about the streets of Jerusalem crying: “ Who — 
among us can live amid the everlasting burnings?” 

This feeling prompted them to look about them for — 
a leader. They needed a mediator, an interpreter. — 
They were like the Jews of Ezekiel’s day, who, when — 
they heard of the fall of Jerusalem, came clamouring 
to the hitherto neglected prophet in search of reliable 
information about God. ‘This increasing sense of the 
nearness of God combined with their intensified feeling — 








POWER OF THE DESERT 99 


of incompetence made them favourable to the leader- 
ship of the one man in their midst who was sure of 
God. “Go thou near, and hear what Jehovah our God 
shall say: and speak thou unto us * * * and we will 
hear it, and do it.” 

The times in which we live indicate in many ways a 
feeling akin to that of these ancient Hebrews. The 
fundamental problem of the time is the problem of 
authority. Whether we view it as a domestic or a 
social problem, whether we consider it from the point 
of view of politics or government, the age keenly feels 
that the problem at bottom is a religious one. It was 
never harder to do without God, nor perhaps more 
difficult to find Him than now. Men everywhere con- 
fusedly but keenly confess the need of authority. They 
_ miss the guiding hand upon destiny. They are begin- 
ning to experience the discomforts of the unsheltered 
life. Like Job, they had thought to die in their nests, 
but they now know it was not to be. One by one the 
little finalities have given away. The rapid advance of 
civilisation has destroyed the temporary protection 
given by wealth, culture, and earthly success $ and men 
have been forced much against their wills to realise that 
out and beyond their temporary shelters lies another 
territory of vast spiritual experience in which men must 
needs find shelter from God. 

The swift disenchantments of life tend to increase 
the feeling of instability and uncertainty in all spiritual 
matters. This modern restlessness, the epidemic uncer- 
tainty which Matthew Arnold has well called “ life’s 
sick fatigue,” is all the more impressive because it is 
vague. It does not mean that men are ready to believe 
in the God of the Bible; by no means does it imply that 
they are ready to accept the leadership of the Church; 


100 EDUCATION OF MOSES 


but it does mean that there is a growing disposition 
everywhere to look about for prophets and leaders, for 
men who in some assured fashion hold the secret of the 
eternal and unseen realms. The age is eager to hear 
the message of the pathfinder; it is ready to follow the 
man who has the courage to storm the heights of God’s 
holy mountain and give to the world a new basis for 
faith and confidence. The augmented moral sensibility 
of the times, a by-product of Christianity, makes men 
demand more of themselves than in former ages. The 
quest for safe conduct has become a compelling and 
passionate obsession, and this more than any other 
thing constitutes the opportunity of the spiritual man 
to show that the Word still has its ancient power and 
by his confident testimony to bring men a true knowl- 
edge of the Most High God. © 

The acceptance of Moses’ leadership was due in the 
second place to the fact that the Hebrews realised that 
God must reveal Himself through a human personality. 
Their very knowledge of God made them fear Him. 
Who could look upon God and live? They required a 
mediator, an interpreter. Go thou near and hear for 
us—by this they confessed the moral supremacy of 
their leader. 

Emerson has finely said that “ character is the moral 
order seen through the individual nature.’’ If the 
vision of God is essential to human happiness, this vis- 
ion can only be communicated by way of a man; and © 
while this truth is most impressively shown in the In- 
carnation, it was long anticipated in the ministry of the 
lawgivers and prophets of the old dispensation. ‘The 
Hebrews felt that this great God, whom to know aright 
meant stability, peace, and progress, must reveal Him- 
self through a human personality; and they turned to 











POWER OF THE DESERT 101 


Moses, asking, not for expert knowledge concerning 
social problems, nor even guidance in matters of gov- 
ernment, but specific information concerning the Divine 
will, with a disposition to obey when it should be given. 

Moses gained the power to communicate the revela- 
tion of God in the desert discipline. Such knowledge 
cannot be obtained in the rush and hurry of life. A 
man must go apart and get a just perspective of things. 
It is only among those who have learned how to lead a 
“life of thoughtful stillness ” that such a revelation is 
realised. The men of spiritual power have always 
known the desert discipline. Moses and Elijah, John 
the Baptist and Paul gained their deep insight into the 
mind of God in this way. Even in the midst of the 
crowd they never lost the independence of solitude. 
_ Few seek the desert voluntarily. .They are usually 
driven into it through failure and mistake. It is this 
fact alone that should reconcile us to the humiliations 
of our first failures. The most active life needs, at 
times, periods of seclusion, quiet, and rest. God keeps 
His greatest communications for those who know how 
to be alone. His word ever is: “ Go forth into the plain 
and I will speak with thee.” The plain is often desolate, 
but it frequently becomes the place of vision. 

The world exhibits three types of men: The crowd- 
centered, the self-centered, and the God-centered. 

Most of us are crowd-centered. We have no root in 
ourselves. We live only when we are in the moving 
mass. ‘This is the ever-present danger of our democ- 
racy. Men imagine they cannot possibly go wrong if 
they are moving with the crowd. The crowd is a ter- 
rible despot; how quickly does it seize the enthusiast 
and tame him to its irrational will. Its deadly effect 
is to level individuality to the plane of environment. 


102 EDUCATION OF MOSES 


Goodness never becomes real until self-selected, and 
that often in face of opposing forces; and yet how few 
of us can muster courage enough to break with the 
crowd, and enjoy the glorious distinction of standing 
for an unpopular cause. The blessing of failure of any 
kind is that it detaches a man from the crowd, and 
drives him into the desert to think and meditate 
and pray. 

But the desert has its dangers, for here you will 
usually find the self-centered man. To break with the 
crowd is often the keenest pleasure of a strong nature. 
If one have talent, learning, personai force, it is an 
added distinction to be different from others. But how 
often have men exchanged the bondage of the crowd 
for the more subtle bondage of self-service. This was 
Plato’s notion of a church of aristocratic philosophers, 
composed of men who could think themselves apart 
from the crowd and enjoy the delights of contempla- 
tion. This was the temptation of the post-apostolic 
Church, when men sought salvation by forsaking the 
crowd and becoming hermits and monks. This, too, is 
the danger of mere culture, even the highest. Goethe 
was in many respects a great man, of incomparable 
gifts and intellectual force, but utterly loveless and 
barren of the higher virtues, a perfect type of the self- 
centered man. And this is the danger of much of the 
polite and refined religion of the times. There is a ten- 
dency to limit religion to such rare atmospheres and 
secluded regions as to make the devotee self-centered 
even in his highest devotional efforts. Religion of this 
sort produces a static rather than a dynamic piety. 
Men become stationary engines, rather than locomo- 
tives. If the world is fortunate enough to attach itself 
to their lives they can do much good, but they lack the 








POWER OF THE DESERT 103 


power of mobility; they cannot go out into the high- 
ways and hedges and draw men to Christ. 

Moses escaped both of these dangers. His initial 
mistake detached him from the crowd, while his supe- 
rior nature safeguarded him from a self-centered life; 
and in the desert he learned how to become a God- 
centered man. He learned there the reality of God, 
that it consisted not in a contemplative but in an active 
love. God was an activity, merciful, compassionate, 
and loving. Moreover, he learned that this loving pur- 
pose required a human ministry for its expression; and 
when he stood in the midst of the people they saw these 
two things: A man who had an assured knowledge of 
God, and one whose personality could inspire confidence 
in his leadership; hence they turned to him as their 
mediator and interpreter. 

And this is the supreme function of the Christian 
man. Christianity does not aim to establish a Christian 
civilisation, but to produce a community of typical per- 
sonalities. This typical personality is to stand in his 
generation as a burning and shining light; a man 
through whose individual nature 


God shows sufficient of His light 
For those in the dark to rise by. 


For there is darkness, and men are vaguely conscious of 
it. Uncertainty characterises our thinking in all high 
directions, and nowhere more so than in the domain of 
the spirit. To see God again, to feel afresh the power 
of the Unseen and Eternal, once more to experience the 
guiding hand of Providence upon the affairs of the 
world—is not this the supreme need of the time? And 
it is to this typical personality, of which Moses is an 


104 EDUCATION OF MOSES 


example, that the age must look for fresh light upon 
the deep problems of-spiritual life and adventure. 

It is the function of the Church to develop these 
typical personalities and release their power in the 
world. The historian of the future, in writing of our 
nation, will have occasion to say that the most re- 
markable feature of this age is what we call the social 
awakening. We see too keenly its extravagances and 
extremes; he will see its deeper meaning. The time 
has come for us to refrain from expending our energies 
upon criticisms and to turn our attention to appreci- 
ations. It is easy to point out the superficial and even 
harmful aspect of this awakening. It is easy to say that — 
many are wasting their energies on doctoring symptoms 
rather than in the removal of causes. Extravagance 
and over-emphasis characterise new movements, but by 
no means adequately represent them. 

What we Christians need to do is to conacded the’ @ 
deeper aspect of the question. At bottom what does it 
mean? What opportunity does it bring home to us, — 
and, above all, what chance does it offer to the spiritual 
man for regaining an assured leadership of the world? 
The heaving of the dough proves the presence of a 
mighty leaven. Visions are born of this awakening 
which disturb our ecclesiastical contentment. May it 
not be true that God is stirring up our nests and driving 
us back to the arena? May it not imply that our desert 
discipline is over, and that God is loudly calling upon 
us to come back into this modern Egypt with our 
Saving message ? 

I believe this social awakening in its deeper aspect is 
bringing a mighty opportunity to the Church. It does 
not seem at present to be keenly alive to our spiritual 
message, but it is beginning to feel the need of a typical 








POWER OF THE DESERT 105 


personality ; it is ready to appreciate the appearance of 
a man with an assured knowledge of God. It wants 
pathfinders, mediators, and interpreters of the will of 
Christ. It is ready to welcome guides who know the 
spiritual realm. For one thing many are beginning to 
realise that social redemption without personal religion 
is a failure. They are beginning to feel that personal 
love for Christ is the sole dynamic for social service. 
Social service without spiritual relationships at best can 
produce a child’s garden. We know the flowers did 
not grow in that soil, and that the sun will wither them. 
As these ambitious schemes for social betterment have 
failed, men have been turning more eagerly to the 
Church. The very criticism of the Church which is so 
irritating to many is an implied tribute to its function. 
It is really a confession of the need and power of reli- 
gion; it is at bottom a demand for the coming forth of 
typical personalities. Every successful effort to relieve 
social misery, and to allay the strife between the classes, 
prepares the way for the Gospel to reach the spiritual 
needs of men. 

The great need, then, is not that Christian men 
should unite upon a method, but that the Church should 
produce typical persons, through whose lives and 
testimony men see God manifest in the flesh. What is 
required is not uniformity of method but identity of 
principle, with diversified individual application. We 
need guiding principles and fixed convictions, and these 
require for their cultivation a period of desert silence ; 
but in the last analysis the only place where they become 
useful to God or man is in the practical leadership 
which comes from their application to the living prob- 
lems of living men. 

E. R. Sill tells a poetic story of a fine young soldier 


106 EDUCATION OF MOSES 


fighting round his banner at the head of his column, 
while a craven lurks on the outskirts, who, envying the 
youth his shining blade, rejects his own sword because 
it is old and blunt, and flees the conflict. Anon comes 
the youth, clean forespent and weaponless, and finding 
the rejected sword in the sand seizes it and wins a 
mighty victory. 

And that is a parable of modern life. First, we have 
seen this generation going forth to fight the forces of 
evil with the shining blade of social regeneration. We, 
too, have seen many like the craven who rejected the 
sword he had because it was old and seemingly blunt 


and fled the field. But now, after much fighting and 


many failures, comes the generation again, bannerless 
and weaponless, ready now to take up the old sword of 
the Spirit, which is the Word of God, and eager to 
wield it in the cause of truth and righteousness. 

And shall we who witness this mighty conflict, whose 
Gospel is the energy working through it, and who be- 
lieve and have ever believed in the old sword of the 


Spirit—shall we leave these restless fighters to meet the © 


enemy alone? God forbid! Rather is not this a time 
for us to use the old sword with greater zeal, seeing that 
the world is coming to our view of its power? 

But if we are to do this we must put behind our 
testimony the courage of rich and deep experience, the 
persuasive and compelling influence of that typical per- 
sonality, God begotten but man developed, to which in 
the hours of its deepest need the world has ever made 
its appeal, an appeal all the more impressive that it 
embodied vague hopes, and confessed disappoint- 
ments, but supremely confident of one thing, the need 
of a mediator and interpreter of the will and the ways 
of God. | 











VIll 
THE, DEATH IN THE DESERT 


“ And Moses went up from the plains of Moab to the 
top of Pisgah, and the Lord said unto him: This is the 
land; I have caused thee to see it; but thou shalt not go 
over thsther.’—DEUTERONOMY 34: 1-4. 


REAT men ought to die in high places. The 
top of Pisgah was a fitting place for the last 


scene of Moses’ life. The Israelites, after forty 
years of wandering, had come to the base of the eastern 
range which constituted the last barrier to the Land of 
Promise. Here Moses bade farewell to his people, and 
went alone into the mountains. 

He was an old man, but his eye was not dim, neither 
was his natural strength abated. As he climbed the 
lower slopes, the dusty desert lost its grimness in a 
mystic haze, and he steadily plodded upward until he 
stood on the top of Pisgah. Here before him, in won- 
derful outline, lay the land of his dreams and desires. 
Far to the north he could see the snowy summits of 
Lebanon and Hermon; shimmering to the south of 
Esdraelon, and flanked by the twin domes of Gerizim 
and Ebal lay the lake of Galilee; to the far south, the 
Dead Sea—grim reminder of retributive justice; at his 
feet the deep tropical trench of the Jordan valley, with 
the walled. city of Jericho, soon to fall before Joshua’s 
army, guarding its western slope; while directly in 
front lay the great central range, in one of whose wind- 


107 


108 EDUCATION OF MOSES) 


grieved gashes he could descry the white walls of the 
hill fortress of Jebus, future city of God. 

All this he saw with the eye, but with the vision of 
the soul he saw other things. It was the Land of 
Promise, of his dreams and desires. ‘This was the 
country where he hoped to see Israel growing to ma- 
turity, learning in the ways of obedience and holiness 
to become the missionary race to a lost world. Here he 
expected to find rest after labour, to grow old and die 
among his own people. All this he saw and felt, but 
he knew it was not to be. He could look upon it, but 
never enter in. ‘T'oo late he had come to it; he could see 
it, appreciate it, but he was dying. What a moment for 
a man like this—epochal, full of tragic disappointment. 

What were his thoughts on that wind swept height ? 
Like a great ball life lay behind him, and he could see 
all of it, the grave and the gay, the purposes of good 
and evil, the uselessness of sighing’ and crying, of 
fighting and striving. He had a complete chart of it, 
but his knowledge came too late: 


There’s the lsfe lying, 
And I see all of 1t, , 
Only Pm dying. 


He felt the burden of an incommunicable wisdom. 
After all, wisdom was just a catalogue of useless re- 
grets, a thing which by no magic could be imparted to 
others. And there was an even more disturbing feel- 
ing ; this vision of the Land of Promise was his reward. 
His reward? Ah, how bitter that was! To be per- 
mitted to look upon what he had toiled for, and suffered 
for; to see it in its attractiveness and charm, all the 
while knowing that it is not for him, that he has come 
to it too late—that is indeed a bitter thought. 


— 








DEATH IN THE DESERT 109 


Such a moment comes to most of us. There is a 
time with all of us, if we live long enough, when we 
must go into a lonely mountain and gaze upon a land of 
promise—and realise that it is not to be ours. A clear 
realisation that much of what we have desired and la- 
boured for, and believed that we deserved to have, is 
never to be ours, is inseparable from any prolonged 
existence on this planet. That is why a vein of melan- 
choly runs through the happiest life. It is not only 
present in old age, but makes itself felt in maturity, and 
sometimes even adds a somber tinge to the long, long 
thoughts of youth. 

This natural melancholy has begotten much pessi- 
- mistic philosophy, proverbial wisdom, and sentimental 
poetry, and on the whole introduces a strain of mysti- 
fication into life’s clearest experiences. Is life a cheat 
after all? Are we creatures of delusion? Are we ever 
doomed to disappointment? Are we inevitably destined 
to view from life’s highest summits the grim fact of 
failure? 

I wish you to note this fact, for it is a fact of normal 
experience: We are so constituted that we cease to want 
the thing we have, we live in our anticipations and 
move in the direction of our visions; and frequently 
we seem to reach these Pisgah heights, and look with 
undimmed eye upon what we have worked for and 
wanted, only to realise that it is not for us. We have 
sown and others have reaped the fruit, we have pa- 
tiently endured and others attain the reward, and the 
best that life offers is a vision of the thing that we 
have missed—just a Pisgah sight before we die. To 
live until we are wise enough to live better, to look 
upon the entire circle of life and know the whole of it, 
to gain from experience a wisdom that would make 


110 EDUCATION OF MOSES 


rich coming generations and then realise that we can- 
not impart it, to awake to the consciousness that we 
have entered into our inheritance too late to enjoy it— 
that we can see life whole, only now we are dying— 
this is destiny. 

Moses must stand aside and allow Joshua to reap the 
reward; he must look upon the eager faces of Jewish 
youth pressing into the land, with never a thought of 
him, and then turn away to the bleak uplands to die 
alone. Oh, these Pisgah sights, how disappointing they 
are, especially when many of us have to live on, long 


after we know beyond a doubt that the thing we have — q 


laboured for and desired can never be ours. Doomed, 
perchance, to wander in some Arabian desert, amid sand 
and waste and desolation, and know all the time that 
beyond the mountains lies the land of milk and honey, 
and that it is not for us, nor ever can be. 

The experience of Moses is even more perplexing 
when we consider the reason why he was not permitted 
to enter the land. On one occasion he made a mistake. 


The people clamoured. They were always clamouring ~ . 


and complaining, and for a moment Moses became im- 
patient and God-forgetting, and took some credit. to 
himself for the waters of Meribah. ‘This was a sin, of 
course, but a very small sin, a quite excusable offense; 
yet for this, and this alone, he lost his reward. 

God seems partial at times, for, as Dr. Davidson has 
pointed out, He appears to punish the mistakes of some 
more severely than the sins of others. The sin of Saul 
son of Kish was quite insignificant in comparison with 
the transgressions of David, and yet God rejected Saul 
and pardoned David. The mistake of Moses was insig- 
nificant in comparison with the continuous clamouring 
of the Israelites; yet Moses was punished, and they 








DEATH IN THE DESERT 111 


entered in. The sin of Moses was not only a mistake, 
but a mistake of impulse. There was nothing delib- 
erate or intentional about it. He was so absorbed and 
troubled with the continual nagging of the rebellious 
Israelites that he forgot himself for an instant, and yet 
for this he could not enter in. 

This is another of life’s inevitable facts, the fact of 
solidarity. No man lives to himself, but in a series of 
relationships to others. Moses usually acted with refer- 
ence to the needs of his people. He was one of those 
men, rare in any age, so conscientious in his sense of 
responsibility for others that he had no time to think 
of himself. He had to be prophet, lawgiver, judge, and 
father to a very immature and selfish people. What 
time had he to think of himself? What opportunity in 
the crowded day for personal cultivation? Was it an 
inexcusable thing that he should lose self-control for 
an instant? Was it fair to punish him so severely? 
Whatever we think of this, it is certainly true to 
life as we know it. We are unavoidably linked to one 
another. We share in the weaknesses and limitations 
of those closest to us, even while doing our full duty 
by them. 

Here is a mother with large possibilities for culture 
and spiritual experience, linked to a large family 
pinched by poverty, enmeshed in group selfishness, or 
that even more deadly evil of thoughtlessness. What 
time has she for personal cultivation? And if she 
grows petulant and at times becomes unspiritual, while 
her hungry brood clamours for attention, is she to be 
punished and kept from her reward? And yet how 
many mothers there are who find themselves, in middle 
life, old before their time, hard, cross-grained, and 
sullen, looking upon a land of promise, of youthful day 


112 EDUCATION OF MOSES 


dreams, knowing all the while that it will never be 
theirs’ Here is a man, capable of spiritual passion and 
high aspiration, crowded always by homely duties and 
undramatic tasks, who finds himself at last freed from 
such encumbrances, ready, it seems, to enjoy the fruits 
of life, ordered at such a time to climb some Pisgah 
and look down upon the land of his dreams and then 
die without reward. The destiny of life rarely agrees 
with our expectations. | 

The power of those most closely related to us to limit, 
if not to destroy, our usefulness is a terrible thing. A 
minister’s influence over his community is very strictly 


limited by the behaviour of his family; a man’s fitness 


to possess the legitimate fruit of his labour is often — 
determined by the attitude of those for whom he is di- 
rectly responsible. Moses sinned because he was closely _ 
identified with the Israelites. It is best frankly to face 
the fact; sometimes the greatest punishments seem to 


be visited upon the accidental phases of conduct, while 


essential sins and deliberate perversions appear to be 
overlooked. 


There is another aspect of this mistake worthy of — ; 


notice. Even if we regard it as very sinful in itself, 


still, in comparison with what Moses accomplished, it 
appears quite inconsequential. Think of his masterly — 


service in delivering the Israelites from Pharaoh, of his’ P 


long, uncomplaining sojourn in the wilderness—this FS 


man who was fit from the beginning to live in a land a 
of promise, of that journey of fifteen months which ~ 
lengthened out into forty years, of the glories of Mount 
Sinai, and that after all these hardships and disappoint- — 
ments this man had led his people to the borders of the © 


promised land. They had come through fire and water, a 


but they were ready to enter in, a disciplined, eager — 











DEATH IN THE DESERT 113 


host. Why, then, was such a man penalised for such 
an insignificant mistake? 

It is not easy to answer such a question satisfactorily. 
Still, the important thing to observe is that the be- 
haviour of Moses stands out in strong relief on the 
background of this mystery. Whatever be the ques- 
tions raised by the speculative mind concerning the 
justice of this procedure, they seem not to have oc- 
curred to the man most vitally interested.. For years 
he had known the costliness of his mistake, but his 
behaviour after his sin was, if such a thing be possible, 
more exemplary than before. There was no relaxing 
of vigilance, no fault finding with Providence, no fret- 
ful complaining of destiny. He did his duty like a 
man, with never a thought of himself. He had a manly 
faith in his destiny, even when that destiny seemed 


dark, and a passionate ambition to do his work well. 


He was young with. the eternal youth of high aspira- 
tion, the splendid vigour and poise of one conscious of 
a mission. His spirit does not break even when he 


realises the incompleteness of this life. He never seems 


so great, so strong, so full of resource and command of 
the future as when he presses up the mountain to take 
a last look at the land that he loved. 

What was the source of his tremendous peace? Why 
had he escaped misgivings as to the justice of Provi- 
dence? Before we answer this we must consider the 
important difference between accepting your destiny as 
God shapes it, and weakly acquiescing in your nature 
as you find it. Your nature is what you are now; but 
your destiny is what you may become, if you use well 
what God has given you. It is a very common but very 
contemptible opinion, that because one is naturally weak 
and poor spirited, it is therefore useless to strive or to 


114 EDUCATION OF MOSES 


desire. Nature is what it is, some say, and you cannot 
change it. Such an opinion is a manifest confession of 
weakness; it is a false estimate of human nature. It is 
quite true that if human nature be left to its own 
devices it will not change for the better, but then it is 
our business to change our nature, and bring its aims 
and impulses up to the level of destiny. God has been 
pleased to give to every man the materials for the 
making of a good life. It is for us to use them or die. 
The man who accepts himself as he now is is lost. He 
is defeated without a fight. But he who accepts his 
destiny as God plans it will surely change his nature for 
the better, and come to his end in peace. 

We become aware of the working of Providence in 
life ordinarily through some form of denial or reverse. 
Something crosses man’s track, and breaks up the con- 
tinuity of life. And when this happens it is common to 
find fault with Providence. Some say, if we cannot 
enter the Promised Land, we will cease to strive at all. 
But this is fatal to all the higher interests of the soul. 
Even when we think that punishment falls more heavily 
upon the accidental rather than the essential mistakes of 
life, still we ought never to give over striving for spir- 
itual betterment. But if one is to resist the temptations 
suggested by this experience, one must have resources, 
and these are adequately provided in the divine plan 
for our life. 

We should be ambitious to bring our natures up to 
the level of our destiny, a destiny opened to us by the 
redemptive mercies of God. We may never attain to 
the promised land just as we now conceive it; it may 
chance that just some Pisgah sight will be all that we 
shall get of that; but the important thing is that, by 
learning how to accept our destiny, we shall bring our 


DEATH IN THE DESERT 115 


natures into conformity with the divine ideal; we shall 
develop a disposition fitting us for companionship with 
the Most High God. 

It was his great faith in his destiny that enabled 
Moses to stand firm on Pisgah’s height and surrender 
his earthly reward. It was the finest renunciation of a 
life of utter selflessness, and the source of his confi- 
dence in God is directly traceable to his desert experi- 
ence. There he had been disciplined; there he had 
learned to escape its dangers; there, too, he had discov- 
ered its power to link him to God. There he had seen 
the vision of the burning bush, and from it years later 
he drew inspiration. His aim in life was to “ know the 
good will of him that dwelt in the bush.” This was his 
great accumulation which neither change nor disap- 
pointment could diminish, and it was this which, in the 
last hours of his career, enabled him with quiet heart 
and serene faith to accept his destiny. Moses believed 
in the goodness of God, and his faith in this, the deep- 
est element in the divine nature, suggests three im- 
pressive truths: 

The closer we are to the divine purposes, the more 
rigourous is He in judging and punishing our mistakes. 
‘The blunders of a leader are more costly than those of 
a follower. The clamours of the crowd were inconse- 
quential; they were but children, of little importance 
either individually or in mass; but Moses was the 
leader. His mistake was vital because he was God’s 
representative. If our mistakes often seem to be visited 
with greater penalties than they deserve, may this not 
indicate the fact that God takes a far deeper interest in 
our behaviour than we think He does. We have no 
right to think that our life has no importance. The 
very privations which issue from our blunders should 


116 EDUCATION OF MOSES 


remind us of the critical character of all actions, of 
what Chesterton calls “tremendous trifles.” This is 
why, in proportion as a man grows in the comprehen- 
sion of God, he becomes increasingly severe with him- 
self. It means the rigid scrutiny of thoughts and 
words, because such a life is becoming more capable of 
leadership. Leadership means influence, and influence 
means creative responsibility. The punishments of 
God often measure man’s importance. 

The continuity of the work rather than the satisfac- 
tion of the worker is the important thing with God. 
Moses is forced to realise the truth, that with God 
there is no such thing as an indispensable man. He 
had led the children of Israel for forty years. He 
had become an institution; it seemed impossible to 
think of the future without his leadership; still he is 
commanded to step aside, not because he is old or unfit, 
but simply because it is God’s will. He did it grace- 
fully because he saw in it another manifestation of the 
“ good will of him that dwelt in the bush.” His great 
renunciation was the fruit of that long, silent period 
in the desert, when he came to know the mind of the 
Eternal. 

The work is more important than the workman. 
“Be the workmen what they may,” says Bacon, “ let 
us speak of the work; the true greatness of kingdoms 
and estates, and the means thereof.” Moses’ career 
was a means to an end, not the end in itself. This was 
the final and highest phase of faith in the great work- 
men who laid the foundations of God’s Kingdom in 
this world. Thye always thought of the work—its con- 
tinuity and permanence. Their prayer was ever: “ Es- 
tablish thou the work of our hands, yea the work of 
our hands, establish it.” 


—— 


DEATH IN THE DESERT 117 


Such a faith is necessary if we are to accept our 
destiny, for it is a very common thing in this world to 
outlive our usefulness. We appear to be born either 
before or just after a favourable time, or we fit our- 
selves for a form of service we deem indispensable, 
only to find that the times have changed and we cannot 
market our wares. It is quite apparent to us that Moses 
had outlived his usefulness. He was a law-giver, and 
the time needed a soldier. Moses must give way to 
Joshua, just as in a later time Elijah had to make way 
for Elisha. Sometimes the work God gives a man to 
do unfits him for the thing he desires to do. David 
wanted to build the temple, but God made him a man 
of war. So it often happens that our children enter 
the land which we are permitted to see only from some 
Pisgah height ; it remains to the end a land of dreams. 
In this life there is no fulfillment. 

But these unfulfilled desires are the sure prophecies 
of another and enlarging experience; for all temporal 
experiences lead out into eternal spaces, opening upon 
the wide horizons of spiritual relationships. Sometimes 
we see from Pisgah, not only the land of our dreams, 
but things of which we never dreamed. We are star- 
tled by a glimpse of the shining domes and glory 
crowned towers of the Celestial City. We awake to the 
realisation that in this world we have no abiding place, 
that our land of promise cannot be confined to homely 
earth, but that somewhere beyond the sighing and the 
crying there is a city which hath foundations, whose 
builder and maker is God. 





PART III 


PROPHETIC STRAINS OF OLD 
EXPERIENCES 








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IX 
RELIGION—WITH RESERVATIONS 


“Thus Jehu destroyed Baal out of Israel. Howbeit, 


from the sins of Jeroboam, the son of Nebat, who made 


Israel to sin, Jehu departed not.’—II Krncs 10: 28, 29. 


HAT interest have we in the misdoings of an 
old Hebrew king who has been dead these | 


three thousand years? What are we to do 
with the sanguinary story contained in this chapter 


except to comment on the extraordinary thoroughness 


with which the man carried out his plan? The answer 


is that the one subject of perennial interest is human 
nature. No matter how far separated in time, or how 


different may be the social system under which one 
lives, man is and remains very much what he has always 
been, a complex of good and evil; therefore, the study 
of human nature, whether in ancient or modern char- 
acters, is one of the most profitable, as indeed it should 
be one of the most salutary of spiritual disciplines. So 
it is the element of human nature we find in ourselves 
that is latent in this story. | 

We shall be surprised when we get into it, to see how 
familiar it is. It is a wise thing for a man to be work- 
ing at an understanding of himself and of his neigh- 
bours; to comprehend the strange inconsistencies and 
mutations of his mind; and the best. way to illuminate 
this region is to go to the Bible where the stories are 
told for certain moral purposes. We get in these 


121 


122 STRAINS OF OLD EXPERIENCES 


stories what we often do not find in secular literature— __ 
the unveiling of human hearts. That is bil the Bible.” 
is the way of life. “a 

This.story, so far as we are paceenedi wolves ae 
secession, a marriage and a revolution. When King — 
Solomon died, his foolish son Rehoboam came to the 
throne, and on account of his policy of taxation devel- 
oped a schism among the people, and ten tribes under 
the leadership of Jeroboam, the son of Nebat, went up 
to Samaria and set up house for themselves. Anyone 
that reads the story can readily understand the justifi- 
cation of that step so far as politics is concerned, yet _ 
one of the difficulties that Jeroboam confronted—and _ 
he was a man of considerable executive power and 
knowledge of human nature—was the religious phase 
of the thing. It would be highly inexpedient for his 
subjects to be going down to Jerusalem for their reli- 
gion if they were to be separated politically from the 
nation whose capital was in that city. Hence he devised 
a scheme to have sanctuaries of his own, and choosing 
with great skill the sacred sites of the country, he 
founded a sanctuary in the north at Dan, and another 
in the south at Bethel, celebrated in Hebrew story as 
the place where Jacob had his dream. There he built 
churches, so to speak, and there he consecrated priests, 
and set up golden calves; images which were supposed 
to suggest God to the people. As someone has said, 
“he chose to break the second commandment in order 
to keep the first.”” He said to the people, “ These be 





your gods, O Israel, that brought you up from the land _ 


of Egypt!” The evil result of the marriage of the true | 


with the false religion is seen in the history of the 


people down to the Assyrian captivity. Wherever — 
Jeroboam is mentioned he is called “ Jeroboam, the son — 





RELIGION WITH RESERVATIONS 123 


of Nebat, that made Israel to sin,’ and the awful idol- 
atry which corrupted the people in later times, which 
was severely condemned by their prophets, and which 
was the primary reason for their deportation to As- 
syria, is to be traced directly to the unfortunate depart- 
ure from the true religion which was characteristic of 
his policy. 

This action also undermined the religious simplicity 
and purity of the people and made them familiar with 
other religions and other ways. So it was not difficult 
sometime after for Ahab to marry a Pheenician prin- 
cess, Jezebel, a strong and vigourous-minded woman, 
who brought from her heathen home, her own private 
gods, and not content with that, determined that she 
would set up splendid sanctuaries for the worship of 
_ these strange and alien things. She had a temple to 
Astarte at Jezreel, where there were four hundred 
priests, and another at Samaria to Baal, where there 
were four hundred and fifty priests. We know the 
difficulties that arose from the grafting on to the parent 
stock of a false religion supported by the dynasty, and 
the enormous difficulty that Elijah, and his successor 
Elisha, had with those evil influences. 

‘At the death of Ahab a revolution.took place under 
Jehu, and the first thing the latter set himself to do was 
to root out the Baal-worship that Jezebel had brought 
into the land. 

In some respects Jehu had a great many admirable 
traits. He wasa root-and-branch sort of a man, a kind 
of man we all like, Rooseveltian in his strenuosity, so 
that his fierce and relentless driving up and down the 
land caused a proverb to be circulated in Israel which 
is current even unto this day. He was a man who 
knew how to get what he wanted, and who did not 


124 STRAINS OF OLD EXPERIENCES 


stop at scruples when he was carrying out his plans. — 
Hence he set out most valiantly to rid the land 
of Baal-worship, and the reading of this bloody 
chapter will convince anyone that it was a pretty 
thorough job. 

A man like this at times enlists the co-operation of 
striking personalities. Here was the old, bearded 
anchorite, Jonadab, who had come out of his desert 
haunts to see what was going on, standing at the cross- 
roads when Jehu’s chariot dashed up. 

The horses were reined in, and the king looked down 
on him and said: ‘ You are Jonadab, the leader of the 
Rechabites. Is your heart right with my heart, as my 
heart is with your heart?” | 

He said, “ It is.” 

Then Jehu said, “ Get into my chariot and go with 
me, and see my zeal for the Lord.” 

This was just the sort of job Jonadab liked. Hence 


you see these men linked together with all the moral 


and spiritual forces of the nation behind them going 
forth to root out the unspeakable evil of Baal-worship. 

The chronicler, who looks down the line of history 
and sees the consequences resulting to. future ages of 
the transactions of these men, says, “ Thus,’—and 
there is an immense emphasis on that word for it covers 
all of those bloody transactions—“ Thus Jehu de- 
stroyed Baal out of Israel.” ‘“ But,” says he, “ from 
the sins of Jeroboam, the son of Nebat, who made 
Israel to sin, Jehu departed not.” 

This is where we come upon an interesting thing in _ 
the career of this man. Jehu believed in religion with 
reservations, and his attack on the sins of Baal and his 
unwillingness to attack the sins of Jeroboam, the son — 
of Nebat, brings out one of the great structural lines _ 








RELIGION WITH RESERVATIONS 125 


of cleavage in human nature between what we may call 
foreign sins and home-grown sins. | 
> Baal at that time had no friends. Jezebel was dead. 

Baalism was an unpopular religion because it was 
politically expedient that it be unpopular. It was 
associated with the awful misgovernment of Ahab’s 
reign. The people wanted to get rid of it. It was 
highly expedient for Jehu to encourage them in their 
desire. So this foreign religion, imported by an alien, 
that had no rating on the religious stock exchange, was 
a thing at which he could aim with the utmost satis- 
faction and be sure that he would get the approval of 

the people. 
>) But the sin of Jeroboam, the son of Nebat, was 
another thing. ‘That was not a foreign thing at all; 

it was a home-grown thing. It had been grown on 
Israelitish soil and entered into the very fabric of the 
nation. It was popular. The superstitions and reli- 
gious passions of the northern kingdom had centered in 
this peculiar mixed religion. So Jehu reasoned, “ It is 
best for me to let it alone.” And while he could strike 
hard at the sins of Baal, he had a very tender conscience 
for the mixed religion of Jeroboam. 

This brings out a line of cleavage characteristic of 
human nature from the beginning. We all have an 
extraordinary preference for a divided allegiance, this 
strange confidence in a religion with reservations, 
which when one reflects upon it turns out to be no 
religion at all. 

I have said that the interesting thing here is the light 
thrown on human nature. There are things in our 
world that are foreign, that have no friends, therefore 
it is quite easy to attack them. There are other things 
in our world that are closer to us. They are grown in 


126 STRAINS OF OLD EXPERIENCES 


our kitchen-gardens and have been nurtured in our 
hearts. ‘They involve our earthly interests. We have 
a great tenderness and regard for these things. 

It is a popular opinion—it is quite erroneous—that 
religion sometimes makes men bad. We have known 


people of whom it might charitably be said they would 1 


be better people if they had no religion at all. That 
seems quite paradoxical, but this is what it means: it is 
not true to say that religion makes men bad; it 1s that 
religion brings out the defects of our qualities, just as 
the carbonating of a mineral water will bring out its 
singular taste sometimes to the point of making it un- 
palatable. Some men have just enough religion to 
bring out the bad side of their character. It sharpens 
their angularities and makes them disagreeable, one- 
sided, cranky and fanatical. That only goes to-show 


that when the element of religion is introduced into a_ 


man’s character, if it does not go deep enough the 
chances are he will be a worse rather than a better man. 
It is quite a common thing for middle-aged people to 


regret that they have so little influence over the younger — 
generation. The reason is that they allow themselves ~ 


to become sour, acidulous, over-critical, and captious, 


and so transform themselves into_gadflies that go about — 


trying to sting people into the kingdom with fragments 


of texts torn from their living relationships in. the 


word of God. We need not be surprised at this if we 


take a good look at the story of Jehu. It is not that | 


religion makes men bad. It is that religion with reser- 
vations, that is a determination to be religious up to a 
certain point, only tends to exaggerate the defects of 


our natures and so to expose us to loss of influence to 


say nothing of self-respect. 


This is the explanation of the failure of partial re- 


iA 
: 


{ 


RELIGION WITH RESERVATIONS 127 


forms. Nearly every popular reform, especially of a 
moral kind, is a partial reform, wherein people are 
wrought up to almost hysterical excitement about some 
one particular evil in the community, and all the fight- 
ing strength of the community is discharged at that 
thing and in a narrow way; yet advocacy of perfectly 
good and justifiable reforms may be vitiated because it 
.. does not alter our common inconsistencies. It is always 


| / easy to attack the foreign growth; it is always difficult 


J 


| 
| 
| 


to deal with the home-grown sins. 

Having laid down this proposition, consider it in 
the matter of beliefs. Paul reminds us in the first 
Corinthian Epistle that the world is full of voices, and 
they all have meaning if we could understand them. 
The world is full of many beliefs. If one were able to 


| tise high enough through the atmosphere that sur- 


———— 








rounds our planet, one would find that the great space 
is filled with flying fragments of disintegrating comets 
and stars. Sometimes they strike our belt of atmos- 
phere and become incandescent, and you say, Behold 
the meteor! It only means that just outside the atmos- 
phere of our world are great quantities of matter float- 
ing about in the air. It is the same way with our 
beliefs. Get just beyond’ your particular little world, 
outside the moral and religious atmosphere in which 
you habitually live, and you will find beliefs and dis- 
beliefs, ideas, opinions and notions flying in all direc- 
tions. Sometimes they come into violent contact with 
your own atmosphere and cause an incandescence that 
generates religious controversy and moral strife. 
Some of them are foreign beliefs and some are 
home-grown products. It is always easy for the mod- 
erately religious man to devote more attention to for- 
eign growths than to home-grown sins. It is easy to 


128 STRAINS OF OLD EXPERIENCES 


pitch into Christian Science. It is easy to go for the 
Unitarians. It is easy to find fault with heathen reli- 
gions that are struggling with Christianity on foreign 
fields. It is easy to pick out the strange cults that are 
growing so rankly in our luxuriant, impressionistic 
American cities, and to say all manner of things about 
them. But how hard it is to attack with the same 
consistency the private hobbies, prejudices and fa- 
vourite half-truths that clutter up our minds in daily 
intercourse! 

Take, for example, the parlour game that has ever 
been, and no doubt will always be, played by certain 
types—the hunting of heretics. It used to be a kind 
of sport. It was as much as man’s life was worth to 
stand on certain platforms in this country, or preach in 
certain churches, without making a tremendous denun- 
ciation not only of the supposed unbeliefs of people 
outside the church, but pitching into the other denomi- 
nations. The people loved it and called it “ revival”! 
We have all heard these philippics wherein the preacher, — 
after devoting hours to the denunciation of other de- — 
nominations, leaves you to infer that the only true 
denomination is his own. He leaves his hearers under 
the impression that no argument of a positive kind is 
required to justify his position. 

Yet the dangerous heretic is the man who tries to 
defend what he says he believes by attacking the beliefs 
of other men. Some of us are badly in need of this 
admonition. There is a great deal of complacency in 
our American churches concerning one’s beliefs and 
relationships to God. When-I have heard some good 
people talk it would seem to me that their neighbours 
were all unbelievers, that scepticism and scoundrelism 
were running riot in the land. But were I to ask them, 








RELIGION WITH RESERVATIONS 129 


“ How is it going with you?” I should probably be 
delighted to find that the plague had utterly passed 
them by. That is the way it usually appears to a man 
who believes in religion with reservations. He is very 
hard on the friendless and foreign Baal, but has a great 
tenderness for the sins of Jeroboam, the son of Nebat, 
that made Israel to sin! 

Take the two great beliefs of the Christian religion. 
First, the deity of Christ. I remember once going into 
a certain community and being met by a fanatical- 
looking gentleman who took pains to inform me on the 
way to church that all the ministers in that town were 
heretics, every man a sinner and perverter of the truth, 
and he seemed to be suggesting to me that I had better 
be sure of my theology before I ventured to preach in 

that neighbourhood. I need hardly to say that he took 
all the enthusiasm out of my heart, for I felt from that 
moment that I had entered a foreign environment. 

Yet when one sincerely affirms his belief in Jesus 
Christ as God’s Son and his Saviour he is proclaiming 
in a most positive way a determination to be God’s 
servant, to be able to say in justification of that belief, 
“Whose I am, and whom I serve.” ‘The sure way of 
commending one’s belief in the deity of Christ is the 
surrender of his life. 

Or take the other great truth, the atonement of Jesus 
Christ. It is, indeed, a great moment in human experi- 
ence when one can confidently affirm “ My Saviour died 
for me.” What a truth this is for a sin-cursed world! 
It brings us under the spell of Divine love as no other 
truth can. Yet can we not see that if we do in our 
hearts believe that, it is going to put love and gratitude, 
patience and sympathy, and all the beautiful virtues of 
the Christian life in our hearts so we can stand before 


130 STRAINS OF OLD EXPERIENCES 


our brethren with humbleness, lowliness of mind and 
confidence because we know we are saved by the 
precious blood of Christ? 

But to go out and acrimoniously attack those who do 
not hold our views, or who cannot use our theological 
shibboleths, is to commit precisely the same sin that 
Jehu did and to believe in religion with reservations. 

Or take the more intimate and homely thing, the mat- 
ter of conduct. We all know that not all temptations 
assail us. There are some temptations that could not 
by any possible chance get hold of our lives. We 
should be grateful for this and call to mind what the 
old Scotch theologians called God’s preventive mercy. 
In one of David’s psalms he gives thanks to God for 
the grace which anticipated his every mood and seemed 
to go before him and prepare a way for his feet. It is 
a wonderful thing to have been born and reared in a 
Christian home and to have enjoyed from childhood 
the privileges of the church, and on that account to 
escape the blasting and devastating sins that wreck and 
ruin lives on every hand. But is it not true that in just 
such lives you often find no gratitude, no sense of obli- 
gation to God, to say nothing of humility and thankful- 
ness, but rather the reverse—a tendency to attack sins 
and temptations and weaknesses in other people that 
have never assailed us, and so become like those Phari- 
sees, who could always say the most scathing, bitter and 
terrible things about the publicans and sinners, but | 
never until Jesus came were they forced to turn their | 
eyes on their own hardness, licentiousness, hypocrisy | 
and slackness. 

We are at present concerned about the religious and | 
moral status of the younger generation. Whatever one _ 
can say of them they are healthy-minded, idealistically | 





: 





RELIGION WITH RESERVATIONS 131 


inclined and spiritually susceptible to the finest con- 
structive influences; but if we are troubled because they 
take their own way of following Christ and do not im- 
mediately fall in with our advice on the subject, may it 
not be due in some measure to the fact that they know 
that we have had a great tenderness for our home- 
grown sins? We strike mightily at the sins of Baal, 
but of the sins of Jeroboam, the son of Nebat, we have 
never a word to say. 

Modern psychologists have developed an idea of great 
significance. They speak about “ logic-tight compart- 
ments.” We have often been told that a man cannot 
divide his life into airtight compartments. On the con- 
trary it is the easiest thing in the world. If we could 
get a view of our character at the present moment, it 


would look more like a honeycomb than anything else. 


It is just a mass of logic-tight compartments. 

Why is it that a Nonconformist grocer, who uses 
short measures and light weights, can get into a rage 
about Roman Catholicism, and roast the government 
for its extravagant expenditure of the tax money? 
Why is it you would never think of cheating me out 
_of a nickel, yet brag about cheating a railway company 
out of a dime? It is done every day in the best fami- 
lies, and worse things follow. We concentrate our 
religious interest and enthusiasm on one side of our 


life, and on the other side we have things that are 
_absolutely unspeakable. 


Recall that terrible story in Ezekiel. While the 
| prophet was in the land of captivity God showed him 
what was going on in Jerusalem; how the leaders 
before the people were saying the right thing about 
Jehovah. “ But,’ He said, “go with Me,” and He 


‘\ took him into the secret chambers and there Ezekiel 


132 STRAINS OF OLD EXPERIENCES 


saw, traced on the walls, the foul and obscene features 
of the real gods that these men worshipped. These 
logic-tight compartments in our souls are very common. 

Take the case of David. David had a great deal of 
trouble with his conscience and much worry about his 


sins, and doubtless made resolutions that he would — 


never do them again. But you see he was king, and 
was positive nobody knew anything about them. Uriah 


was dead, and the mouth of Joab was stopped. One © 


day his minister called on him. He was sitting in his 

chamber clothed in most unkingly attire. His eyes 

were red, his face jaded, and the minister said to him: 
“How is my lord the king today?” ; 


The king replied, “I am not well. I am not sleeping — 


well. Perhaps it is the heat, or the cares of state.”’ 
Now Nathan could have recommended a bit of a 
holiday, a journey to Joppa to take the seabaths, but 


on the contrary told him a story and said something © 
like this: “I have called this morning to inform Your | 
Majesty of an important incident that has recently : 
occurred in this community. It is a little thing, per- 
haps, in the eyes of men, but I think it will interest you. | 
There is a man here in the neighbourhood, a rich man 
who has everything that he desires. And there came | 
into his community a poor man whose only possession © 
was one little ewe lamb. That was all he had, but he 
loved it. The rich man, because he was strong, took | 


away the ewe lamb from the poor man.” 

I can see David’s heavy eyes lighting up with fiery 
indignation ; and, rising from his chair, now every inch 
a king, saying: “ Where is this scoundrel? Let me take 
him that I may have off his head before night! ”’ 

And Nathan said quietly: “Thou art the man!” 

This is the proof of love that it is courageous enough 





RELIGION WITH RESERVATIONS 133 


to stab the soul wide-awake with a shaft of light; and 
by breaking down the logic-tight compartments bring 
~ on a conflict which will set the foreign sins and the 
home-grown products in their true relation. For can 
we not see that if Jehu had let Baal alone, and concen- 
trated his reforming zeal upon the evil sanctuaries at 
Bethel and Dan; if he had called on the nation to repent 
_ of its sin of separation, and urged it to return to its 
first allegiance to the true God, Baal-worship would 
have fallen away as something exotic and external to 
the spirit of the nation? In sooth, if we deal frankly 
with the home-grown sins, the foreign growths will 
take care of themselves. 

A divided allegiance is something we are warned 
against throughout the New Testament. Jesus was 

friendly with all sorts of men save one and that man 
was one who had deliberately determined to lead a 
_ double life. A double-minded man is unstable in all 
_ his ways, and he need ask nothing, nor expect anything | 
_ from God. No man believes in God, nor can be a good! 
_ man, who wilfully turns the light within his soul into 
darkness. For nothing is more impressively shown in 
the career of Jehu than this that the true reading of his 
character is not to be determined by his zeal for the 
Lord, but by his tolerance of the sins of Jeroboam. 
And when we find ourselves in a mighty coil about the 
beliefs or unbeliefs of other people; when we are anx- 
ious to call down fire from heaven to destroy those who 
follow not with us well might it be that some fearless 
Nathan should stand before us, and, stripping the veil 
of make-believe from our eyes, show us that a religion 
with reservations, no matter how elaborately supported 
by theological shibboleths, or adorned by the splendour 
of ecclesiastical livery, is no religion at all. 


X 
THE PROPHET AND THE PARASITE 


“Then answered Amos, and said unto Amazgsah, I 
was no prophet, neither was I a prophet’s son; but I 
was an herdman, and a gatherer of sycomore fruit, and 
the Lord took me as I followed the flock, and the Lord 
said unto me, Go, prophesy unto my people Israel.’— 
Amos 7: 14-15. 


OD deals with man in different ways, and the 
(; divine intention will usually be found associ- 
ated with some form of experience in the man ~ 
himself: something that troubled him is finally illumi- — 
nated by the divine Spirit, and the man becomes aware 4 
that he is being urged to some form of service. This 
spiritual impulse appears on the surface to be sudden ~ 
and unexpected, but turns out to be the culmination of — 
experience, and retrospective thought reveals the fact q 
of God’s presence in it some time before that instant — 
when he becomes conscious of being set apart. Let us — 
admit at once that there is something mysterious about — 
the calling of the prophets; still enough remains to con- — 
nect their experience with ours. What I wish to make © 
clear is that God reveals Himself to us through some 
form of experience; He respects our individuality, and _ 
uses precise means of awakening us to His presence © 
and purpose. | 
This personal dealing with men in respect ‘of their _ 
individual peculiarities is one of the outstanding fea- _ 


tures of prophetic experience, which is shown in the | 


134 





PROPHET AND THE PARASITE 135 


conspicuous differences apparent in the prophetic writ- 
ings. One star differeth from another star in glory. 

It is also shown in another characteristic: there is a 
distinctive passage in each of the prophets which tells 
us the secret of his calling. Two things. distinguish 
these personal communications: one is that from that 
moment the man was clearly convinced that he was 
being called to service, the other is that this calling was 
the last stage of a serious and often bitter struggle. 
Hence experience of some sort becames the organ of 
divine revelation. A sympathetic reading of the 
prophets will show, among other features, this charac- 
teristic fact. Hosea’s prophetic calling came to him 
through domestic sorrow, Isaiah’s through disillusion, 
Micah’s by way of poverty, Jeremiah’s through auster- 
-ity. Habakkuk came to his prophetic consciousness 
through a long series of perplexing thoughts, while 
Ezekiel reached his through a sense of failure. It will 
appear as we go on that Amos learned his prophetic 
mission from loneliness and obscurity. The key to it 
is the great passage found in chapter seven, verses four- 
teen and fifteen; but in order to realise its importance 
we must know something of the history of the times, 
the character of the man’s ministry, and the precise 
occasion that compelled him in such words as are here 
recorded to give an account of himself. 

Amos, the first of the writing prophets, appeared in 
Northern Israel about the middle of the eighth century 
B. Cc. Palestine, as is well known, lies between the 
homes of the two ancient civilisations, Babylonia and 
Egypt. By the middle of the eighth century Assyria 
had developed to the point where she entertained am- 
bitions to be a world power, and after long preparations 
set out to subdue the world by the conquest of Egypt, 


136 STRAINS OF OLD EXPERIENCES 


the only nation capable of disputing the supremacy with 
her. To accomplish this Assyria had to pass through 
Palestine. Hence it came about that Israel from that 
time forth was brought into the arena of world politics, 
and the outcome of this experience was the Assyrian 
captivity, when Sargon king of Assyria took Samaria 
in 722 B. C., and carried away to Babylon the entire 
population in what is known as the Assyrian captivity. 
Amos was called about 759 3. c, and the object of his 
mission was to warn Israel of her danger, and, if pos- 
sible, bring her back to God. 

The difficulties in the way were well nigh insur- 
mountable. Jeroboam II, a strong, warlike king, had 
reigned for over forty years, and, during his reign, the 
people had never been defeated in battle. They had 
grown prosperous and rich, and had developed into a 
luxury-loving nation indifferent to its. moral condi- 
tion. Moreover, the people had a false security in 
ceremonial religion, and indulged the notion that God 
would always look after them inasmuch as they were 
the chosen of the Lord. They simply did not and 
would not believe it possible that anything evil could 
befall them. 

The prophet’s efforts were at first directed to the 
destruction of these false hopes. His preaching was 
designed to quicken the national conscience and to set 
the masses in opposition to their religious and political 
leaders. At first little attention was paid to him, but 
eventually he began to impress the common people. | 
Knowledge of his words and influence gradually spread | 
upward until it came to the notice of the aristocracy, | 
and brought about the conflict between the prophet and. 
Amaziah, the priest of Bethel referred to in the signifi- 
cant passage wherein the prophet indicates his calling. 





PROPHET AND THE PARASITE 137 


I can only mention some of the significant features 
of this conflict, in order to throw into high relief the 
great conception of a divine calling expressed in the 
momentous declaration of the man himself. 

Amaziah represented the vested rights of a state- 
supported religion. He was priest of the great church 
at Bethel, a royal chapel, the king’s sanctuary. In order 
to silence the prophet he used the familiar methods 
of the time-serving priest: misrepresentation of the 
prophet’s teaching, and contemptuous denunciation of 
the man. He misrepresented the prophet’s teaching by 
twisting a righteous criticism of the people into a 
charge of conspiracy against the state. Furthermore, a 
prediction of the ultimate fall of the dynasty was con- 
strued as a personal attack on the king, while a predic- 
tion of approaching captivity was represented as a want 
of patriotism, amounting to treason against the nation. 
In addition, Amaziah expressed the utmost contempt 
for the personality of Amos, called him a seer or vision- 

_ ary, objected to the invasion of his territory, and per- 

emptorily demanded that he return to Tekoa and make 

his living there, and speak no more at Bethel, which 

was the king’s sanctuary and a royal house. Space 
forbids dwelling upon the singular self-revelations here 
made, save only to remark upon the low notion of 
prophecy indicated in the speech of Amaziah. Proph- 
ecy was a business. Service of God led to high social 
advantages, and the puppet priest supposed himself 
superior to the countrybred Amos because he was min- 
ister of the First Church of Bethel, and had a king for 
a parishioner. 

To this Amos made his immortal reply: “I was no 
prophet, neither was I a prophet’s son; but I was an 
herdman, and a gatherer of sycomore fruit: and the 





138 STRAINS OF OLD EXPERIENCES 


Lord took me as I followed the flock, and the Lord said 
unto me, Go, prophesy unto my people Israel.” 

It is needless to comment on such words. They are 
literally alive with the divine power that made Amos 
the embodied conscience of his nation. Emerson once 
remarked that character was “God seen through the 
medium of an individual nature,” and that is the quality 
manifest in this prophetic utterance. 

What, then, was the personal experience through 
which the man attained unto his prophetic conscious- 
ness? Let us at once admit an element of mystery 
about it, and then note the outstanding feature of 
his life. 3 | 

It was obscurity, and its corresponding experience, 
loneliness. From Tekoa, a wilderness south of Jerusa- 
lem; not only a countryman, but engaged in the most 
humble of callings, an herdman of cattle and fig- 
pincher; remote from city influences, devoid of the 
superficial culture of contact with large masses; with 
plenty of time to think and brood and pray ;—this was — 
his environment. Yet with its loneliness the wilderness — 
has ever been the school of great spiritual leaders. 
Need I mention the education of Moses, Elijah, and 
Paul, or remind you of our Lord’s forty days in the 
solitude, to say nothing of the acute insight into human 
hearts shown by John the Baptist ? 

Amos saw through the outside of things to the living 
heart of his time. We see this in his stern, uncom- 
promising criticism of the sins of the period. His 
scorn of the painted vices, the gilded corruption, the 
foolish excitements of the people, is unmatched in 
prophetic literature. 

While we find much of this sort of thing in secular 
writers, Seneca or Juvenal or Lucian, for example,. 


PROPHET AND THE PARASITE 139 


here passionate denunciation is ever inspired with a 
sense of the reality of God and the spiritual values, of 
which these things are the base counterfeits. We see 
this, too, in the insistence that religion is the God- 
given opportunity for righteousness, and not as his 
countrymen imagined an insurance against the conse- 
quences of sinning. Responsibility to God was meas- 
ured by religious privilege. Life’s values rested upon 
graduated responsibility: and judged by this standard 
Israel was the chief sinner among the nations. But 
the deepest of the man’s convictions was his God- 
consciousness. God was felt to be as real as the shat- 
tering of an earthquake or the roar of a lion: “ Surely 
the Lord God will do nothing, but he revealeth his 
secret unto his servants the prophets. ‘The lion hath 
roared, who will not fear? The Lord God hath spoken, 
who can but prophesy?” 

In reflecting upon such an experience we are apt to 
feel out of touch with it. It seems too remote to con- 
cern our modern life because we know nothing of a 
wilderness experience. Quietude or reflection upon the 
unseen verities is little known to our fevered times, 
and yet we are not unacquainted with obscurity or lone- 
liness. Human life never seems so small or trivial as 


when we find ourselves buried in large moving masses, . 


too hurried and fretted to understand the object of 
existence. There is no loneliness like that which over- 
takes a man in the crowded places. It is one of the 
chief causes of present-day discontent. To feel one- 
self obscure is to feel useless and unwanted, without 
enduring values; to be lonely is to be at the mercy of 
uncontrolled forces; and yet this is not the whole of it, 
for with it comes a longing to find a resting place for 
mind and spirit. What if this heartache and bitterness 


‘h 
kL 


140 STRAINS OF OLD EXPERIENCES 


should suddenly unmask life and reveal to us God? 
What if fire break out in the wilderness and show us 
the Lord opening pathways of deliverance, pathways 
to usefulness and enduring values? 

That is what happened to Amos when God took him 
from behind the flock. Who would have thought this 
man capable of such a work? Let us admit the fact of 
loneliness, its temptations and trials, for if a man de- 
termine to hold high purposes it is difficult to find in 
these times kindred minds with whom he may com- 
mune ; but such hours are precisely those in which God 
appears unto him. No man is fit to speak for God until 
he has suffered a little from this sifting experience ; and 
the man must want it keenly, and be willing to seek it 
from the hands of mercy, if he is to have it; for as one 
of our own poets hath said: 


“ God ss not dumb, that he should speak no more. 
If thou hast wanderings in the wilderness 
And findest not Sinas, ’tis thy soul is poor.” 


Amos found Sinai in the wilderness, with its thunder — 


and its fire; but there is a greater mount for us to find 
in our wilderness. Calvary and the cross have shown 
us the love of Christ. Loneliness, obscurity, misunder- 
standing, these are the common experiences of our race. 
Sometimes ’tis bitter and sore, this burden of individ- 
uality, this weight of conviction which sets apart from 


others, which consecrates us to hard and lonely service; — 


but if God made use of such experiences in building up 


that unshakable persuasion of a divine calling from 
which has come the noble order of the prophets, shall — 
we who are the heirs of a greater blessedness despair _ 
of finding in similar experiences the open road to a | 


stronger life? 








! XI 
JEREMIAH’S COMPLAINING PLACE 


“Then I said, I will not make mention of him, nor 
speak any more sn his name. But his word was in mine 
heart as a burning fire shut up in my bones, and I was 
weary with forbearing, and I could not stay.”’—JERE- 
MIAH 20:9, 


S a man prays in his heart so is he. Prayer 
life is the test of character. I do not mean by 
prayer life what a man will say in public; that 


_may be artificial ; it will certainly be correct. By prayer 


life I mean the closet life, a man’s secret and sincere 
communion with God. When a man goes into his 
closet and shuts the door on a curious world, what he 
is essentially will express itself in his speech. 

This closet life is a sacred domain, the most private 


part of us; and yet the Bible invades it and permits us 


to overhear a man at his prayers, and what we hear is 
often startling and unexpected. For one thing, we 
learn that a man does not speak to God in the prayer 
closet as he does in public. In private he is himself, 
and sometimes he says things there which seem to our 
polite ears both inappropriate and improper. 

This text is one of the most original prayers in the 
Bible, yet it is quite different from what prayers are 
supposed to be. The prophet uses language foreign to 
our modes of thought. In fact, this is not so much a 
prayer, in the conventional sense of that term, as a 
complaint. 


141 




























142 STRAINS OF OLD EXPERIENCES 


It is an interesting thing to observe that the people 
who complain to God are either the very bad people or 
the very good people. Mediocre goodness is rarely 
guilty of such questionable taste; its prayers are usually 
quite correct and appropriate. But the bad man does — 
not hesitate to.denounce God; he finds fault with provi- — 
dence; sometimes he indulges in blasphemous expres- — 
sions. ‘The very good man, a man like Jeremiah, for 
instance, will on occasion go into his prayer closet and ~ 
unburden his heart, and his prayer is often, as here, a — 
complaint. ; 

This prayer issued from Jeremiah’s mid-career. — 
The favour of his early ministry had departed when — 
Josiah died, after some eighteen years of what seemed — 
to be unusually successful work in Jerusalem and 
surrounding towns, due partly to the zeal of the king © 
and partly to the discovery of the Book of the Law ~ 
in the year 621 B. c. Suddenly a serious predica- | 
ment had arisen. Josiah, through his policy, had ~ 
involved Judah with Pharaoh-Necho. When the — 
Judean army was destroyed, Jehoiakim, a worldly — 
minded man, came to the throne. He had no sym- © 
pathy with his father’s religious enterprise and wanted 
to revive the pagan days of Manasseh. ‘The first thing — 
he did was to stop all religious activity and try to 
destroy the prophets. Jeremiah found himself in the 
middle of his career, after a period that looked like © 
permanent success, friendless, persecuted, disbelieved, 
contemptibly treated; and one day, after a particu-— 
larly strenuous time, he had been arrested, basti- 
nadoed, and put in the stocks, where for nearly © 
twenty-four hours he had been spit upon in scorn and © 
derision by the defaming multitude. Early in the | 
morning, hungry, heartsore, with every bone in his © 


JEREMIAH’S COMPLAINING PLACE 143 


body aching, he crept into his prayer closet and poured 
out his prayer. 

He tells us here the fact of depression, and that is an 
experience that overtakes every earnest religious man. 
He tells us how that depression was relieved, and how, 
in spite of opposition and failure, he is enabled to 
remain faithful to God. This fact of depression 
grows in part out of the temperament of the man. 
William James, in his suggestive book on Pragmatism, 
has called attention to the tender-minded and tough- 
minded temperaments in philosophy, and that differ- 
ence among philosophers can be traced to the deeper 
differences in human nature. Some men are naturally 
tough-minded. Others are naturally tender-minded. 
There are men who like opposition. They are hard and 
self-reliant. The tough-minded are bold, impudent 
creatures. They court the opposition of the mob. 
They are never so happy as when they are in a minor- 


ity of one. Such men rarely become depressed, because 
they like unpopularity. They can drive themselves 


through the world and get their way done. They are 
rarely capable of sympathy. Such men may make 
great leaders in secular affairs, but they are rarely 
found among the prophets. The tender-minded man, 
on the other hand, is keenly susceptible to environ- 
mental changes. He cannot stand opposition. He does 
not like crowds. He is easily discouraged, and is in 
constant need of sympathy. 

The man of this type may be a great success if he is 
not among people who are hard and sceptical. But if . 
he is opposed or neglected, he may become quarrelsome 
and morbid and sentimental and weak. With proper 
discipline, however, such a man may become a great 
prophet. 


144 STRAINS OF OLD EXPERIENCES 


Jeremiah was of the tender-minded temperament. 


From his youth, he shrank from publicity. When God — 
called him, he said, “‘ Ah, Lord God! behold, I cannot — 
speak: for I ama child.” He did not like crowds; and — 
he did not covet opposition. He needed sympathy and — 
tenderness. He was more of a fern than a rose; he © 
grew better in the shade than in the sunlight. He lived © 
best in quiet. He did not like noise. In the early © 
stages of his career, he was a weak man. He needed © 
hardening in the right direction to get a toughness of © 
fiber without which no man can be great, and yet at the © 
same time so as not to lose the tenderness of heart and — 
sympathy with others that are essential to a prophet’s — 


usefulness. 


This man in the early stages of his dependence in- — 
dulged in the questionable and altogether contemptible — 
habit of self-pity. When you were a little boy and your © 
parents did not do just what you wanted them to do, © 
there were times when you derived considerable pleas- — 
ure just imagining the scene as the people looked on ~ 
your coffin with tears falling upon your cold baby face, ~ 
and you were saying, “ Yes, if you had only known, | 
you would not have brought me to this untimely end.” — 
How excusable it is in children, but how contemptible — 
in a strong man. I know of no evil like self-pity fora — 
man of strength and character. A great deal of our 
so-called piety, a great deal of our sentimental talk 
about bearing a cross, about undergoing discipline, is 


nothing in the world but self-pity. 


Some of us find ourselves in the forties as flabby and 
weak and unfit for hard work as we were when ‘we were _ 
twenty, and we are laying the blame on God. Now that © 
was the source of Jeremiah’s depression. But you — 


must remember that when God sent Jeremiah out into 





Poa eS eee Ces - —— => 


ve 





JEREMIAH’S COMPLAINING PLACE 148 


the world He overcame his initial reluctance by saying: 


_“T have made of thee this day a defenced city, and an 
iron pillar, and brasen walls against the whole land. 
_ Your enemies will dash their heads to pieces on the 
strong walls around your life.” That is the sort of 


promise Jeremiah had gone out with. During the life- 
time of Josiah it seemed as if all that were coming true. 


_ But as soon as Jehoiakim came to the throne everything 


was different. Now he was surrounded with people 
who were not sympathetic believers but scornful scof- 
fers who heaped contempt upon him and made fun of 
his message. Then he began to say: “God has de- 
ceived and disappointed m.e He told me he would 
make of me a defenced city, and an iron pillar, and 
brasen walls against the whole land, and now I am but 


_ a pet lamb led to the slaughter. Wherever I go, I find 


my so-called friends plotting against my life, and now 
here is this unspeakable thing, this bearing of insults, 
this being covered with the slime of contempt, this 
hiding of me in prison, this threatening to throw me 
into cesspools. God has deceived me. He has not kept 
His word. He has not played fair.” 

The man’s depression had a dangerous side at his 
age. He was about forty years old. He was in the 
“roaring forties.” Talk about the temptations of 
youth! There are no temptations like those of middle 
age. Talk about the danger of adolescence! It is not 
anything compared with the dangers of maturity. That 
is the period when we have lost many of our illusions, 
when we have learned that the old principles do not 
guarantee cleanness of life, when we are aware of the 
Opposition that besets us, and when we are tempted to 
lay aside high ideals and adopt expediency, when the 


subtle voice of the tempter comes and says; “ Be not 


146 STRAINS OF OLD EXPERIENCES 


righteous over much, neither be ye wicked over much. 
Just keep in the middle of the road, and don’t. make 
yourself unfavourably conspicuous either as a sinner 
or as a Saint, and then you will be happy.” It is the 
time when temptations cease to stimulate and begin to 
wear down our resistance. It is the time when a man 
who has had a certain measure of success in the world, — 
begins to cast up the balance and say, “‘ Why not relax — 
and take a moral holiday?” It fS the time when, if 
there is any weakness in character, or in religious prin- | 
ciples, we know it. We know it then, and when some ~ 
first-class brutal fact comes into collision with our aims, — 
we are apt to feel the depression of middle age. You — 
will be surprised to see how many men in our time are © 
finding this out. In the Middle Ages the monks were — 
asked, “‘ What is the most dangerous hour in the day ~ 
for the religious man?” And they said, “It is the — 
hour after the noonday meal, when all spiritual things — 
lose their meaning, when, in the glare of the sunlight, — 
spiritual things look least attractive, and the animal in — 
man comes to the surface and clamours for food.” 7 
And they called that time, when the demon of midday 7 
comes to whisper its lies in the ears, the most dangerous ~ 
time for the religious man. You will find in the 
Divina Commedia, among the first sentences of that 
book, which was written when Dante was thirty-five, © 
these words, “ Midway in the journey of my life, I 
found myself in a dark wood where the right way was 
lost.” ‘That is the period when the weather changes | 
constantly, when sunlight gives place quickly to storms, — 
and when confusing shadows are far more deceitful — 
than absolute darkness. It is the time when we are apt — 
to feel that moral ideals are losing their meaning, and } 
when we know something iis the depression of anne y 






JEREMIAH’S COMPLAINING PLACE 147 


or, as the Psalmist puts it, “ the destruction that wast- 
eth at noonday.”’ We talk about a depression that is 
associated with darkness. I do not think that there is 
any depression like that which comes to a servant of 
God who stands at mid-life facing the cruel facts of 
everyday experience; conscious of his weaknesses and 
shrinking powers and the growing hostility in the 
world. If there be any disposition in a man to be de- 
pressed it is the time of times when it is going to show 
itself. All that lay back of Jeremiah’s experience. 
Everyone knows what that means. When we were 
young, God came like the Pied Piper of Hamelin 
through our town playing His subtle tunes. We laid 
aside our toys and, entranced by this strange heavenly 
music, followed Him, and He led us through the pleas- 
ant fields, until suddenly the music stopped and we 
found ourselves on the barren and brown mountain- 
side. Then we were far from home, and He began to 
lay. burdens on us, There are few ministers of the 
Gospel who would not say that if they had known what 
the ministry meant when they were boys they could not 
have been drawn into it with a team of oxen. And if 
you were to say to them today, “ Will you leave it?” 
they would say, “ No.’’ And yet, they know its diffi- 
culties. They know the need for encouragement. Per- 
haps if they had known the difficulties at twenty-five 
they could not have been lured into it. But they are 
in it. It is one of the experiences of the minister to 
feel this at mid-life, just at the time Jeremiah felt it. 
We have changed somewhat from that day when every 
one of us expected to be called to the biggest church 
in America. 

But our minds still go back to those days. Our 
young hearts were filled with idealism. But somehow 


148 STRAINS OF OLD EXPERIENCES 


or other, people are deaf. They do not hear our voices, — 
and the crowds do not come. They went their evil way, 
and we were puzzled awhile, and then we grew more 
and more conscious of the swiftness of the years, and 
we found ourselves in early middle age well equipped — 
for our fight, magnificently endowed, chastened and ~ 
disciplined in spirit, and yet surrounded by a horde of — 
men who had made a success in a secular way, jingling 
their money bags and pointing to us standing in the 
world’s market place and saying, “‘ Why stand ye here 
all the day idle?” and all we can say is, “ Because no 
one hath hired us; no man wants our goods.” 7 

We know what that means. When we begin to feel 
like that, we are apt to raise the question whether we — 
have not make a mistake. But there is always a back~ — 
ground of success on which that seeming failure is — 
projected. Jeremiah saw eighteen years of it. You ~ 
have got years behind you. There was the time when 
you used to get calls more frequently than you do now. — 
There were times when men seemed to care to hear your. © 
voice. They are not so eager now. You are not so 
young any more. Well, but you won’t cheapen your ~ 
goods. You won't go into the market place and offer — 
shoddy stuff. You are offering something that is in- 
tangible and fine. You cannot sell it, not because it is : 
not valuable, but because your market does not under-— 
stand your product. But all the same, it leaves you — 
lonely, troubled, worried; and sooner or later the feel- 
ing comes, “ Am I not a failure? in | 

When a man gets to thinking like that, the first thing | 
you know he says, “Am I not still young enough to © 
change my sphere of labour?” Then the overworked 
pastor hears the siren’s voice of some church board: 
“Come and be our secretary. Race up and down the 


SS ee og ee 





























JEREMIAH’S COMPLAINING PLACE 149 


land, and be a rabble-rouser for the Church. Have 
done with this little job that you have.’’ Or here comes 
the more subtle voice of our theological seminaries, 
“Oh, if you were only a professor in our seminary, 
what a wonderful world this would be!’”’ Sometimes 
it is the voice of business, or that demon voice of the 
lecture platform: “Leave your pulpit! Turn your 
back on your calling. Go out and entertain the world, 
and you will be a success.” And then there comes this 
feeling: “If I cannot manage my own business, how 
in the world can I manage the Church’s business? If 
I am unable to strengthen myself on my own teaching, 
how shall I teach others?’”’ And to the man of sense 
there comes the feeling, “If I cannot be a prophet, I 
_ will not be an entertainer.” Oh, he is depressed all the 
same, That is a sore and bitter thought. 
| This creates a necessity for complaint. A man who 
is depressed because he thinks he has not had a square 
deal, is a man who has a grievance, and no man ever 
had a grievance who did not talk about it to somebody. 
This has been so the world over. Men who have a 
grievance are always in search of an ear into which 
they may pour it. “ Bow down thine ear, that thou 
mayest hear.” “QO Lord, make no tarrying.” The 
world is so full of noise and talk that we want some- 
_ body to hear us. We want to complain. We have got 
something to say. “Oh,” says Job, “if I knew where 
I might find Him! If He would only come out from 
behind this screen of mysteries and show Himself in 
tangible form, if He would only open His door and let 
me come to His judgment seat, what an argument I 
would pour out in explanation of this unspeakable 
_ business!” 
But there is all the difference in the world between 






} 


| 





150 STRAINS OF OLD EXPERIENCES 


complaining to God and complaining about God. Let 
me illustrate it. You have a friend, and somebody tells 
you that he has said something about you. It hurts 
your feelings. Now that is a grievance, and calls for 
an explanation. Suppose you go to him and say: 
“John, I have heard this thing. Did you say it?” 
And John puts his hand on your shoulder and says: 
“Yes; I said it. But I am sorry and ashamed for it. 
You know I love you.” ‘The thing is gone. The com- 
plaint is made and the matter is ended. But suppose 
you did not go to John, and someone came to you and 
said, “ John said so and so about you.” “Is that so?” 
“Yes; and if you knew what he kept back you would 
not trust him any more.” Well, the first thing you 
know, the little sore spot that you had has become 
active hostility, and your tongue is your greatest 
enemy. You say things about him that bring on a 
progressive alienation. Some things grow as you talk 
about them. Talk about money, and money grows 
upon you. Talk about your best friend, and the thing 
grows in the wrong way. Now see how Jeremiah goes 
about the business. He complains to God; he never 
complains about God. But complaining about God is 
more popular. 

It is popular, in the first place, because it seems more 
correct. A great many people are entirely of that 
opinion because they do not know God very well. 
When we pray to God in public, we make a beautiful 
prayer ; but the prayer with which we exhort the people 
never gets into our own heart and life at all. We say 
the thing we think we ought to say, but we do not open 
our hearts and complain to God. At the same time, we 
do not hesitate to complain about God. ‘That is the 
peculiar peril of the minister. It is his peril to exploit 


JEREMIAH’S COMPLAINING PLACE 151 


his moods instead of preaching his principles, to make 
his pulpit instead of his prayer closet his complaining 
place. God have pity upon the church that has such a 
minister ! 

What do these men say? Difficulties about belief in 
the Bible; trouble about belief in the Church; the 
Church full of hypocrites ; social salvation is better than 
individual evangelism ; everybody knows that Christian- 
ity is more or less out of date. All the time these breth- 
ren are exploiting their moods. There is the second 
reason why it is always easier to complain about God 
than to complain to God. It is always easier to be 
talking about your moods than to be practising your 
principles. It is easier to tell the world how you feel 

than what you believe. Half of the conversation that 
- goes on in pastoral visits has to do with symptoms or 
feelings or moods of the people. When we get into the 
homes we find ourselves in what Chesterton calls 
“medical atmosphere.” ‘You remember in Mrs. Wiggs 
of the Cabbage Patch when Miss Hazy got on her 
symptoms she could talk for hours. Our feelings! A 
man does not feel well. Why not? Because God has 
not treated him right, and before you know it that 
vague discontent has grown into hostility or unbelief. 
The feeling has become enmity against God. Com- 
plaining against God becomes a progressive alienation 
from God. Go about talking unkindly about your 
friend and before you know it you cannot look your 
friend in the face. 

Of course, this sort of thing is very popular in some 
places. If aman goes out and attacks religion, or if he 
creates some new thing the newspapers will run after 
him and he will get a following. He is a leader; he is 
a broad man; he is a prophet; he is the founder of a 


152 STRAINS OF OLD EXPERIENCES 


cult that will turn the world upside down. But there 
are those who know that man has left the track, that 
he has abandoned his client in the last hour of the trial; 
that he has lost himself in a wilderness of words, and 
that all this brave talk and posturing before the dumb, 
unthinking mob very poorly disguises from the dis- 
cerning mind the fact of a broken spirit, a complete and 
pathetic failure. It does not mean a failure of religion; 
but it does mean a failure of his religion. 

I do not for a moment lose sight of the difficulties of 
our day. But the fact remains that many ministers are 
no longer running restaurants. They have given them 
up and started cooking schools wherein with much 
learning and poetic artistry all sorts of condiments are 
set forth. But we have got to get back to the restaurant 
business. Who ever heard of going to a cooking school 
to get anything to eat?. The most adventurous soul 
would not risk his life on the products of these cooking 
schools. You go to a restaurant because you are hun- 
gry. You want a cook who will feed you according to 
your appetite. 

That is the trouble with some of our denominations. 
John Wesley believed that when a man had religion he 
knew it. If aman had the toothache he would know it. 
There are altogether too many just now wondering 
whether there be such a thing as conversion, and are 
spending a great deal of time talking about the psychol- 
ogy of religion. There are too many occupied with a 
philosophy of religion that never gets below their necks, 
and all the time in our midst are poor aching hearts 
vaguely longing for the power of the living Chris. If 
you complain about God, you will land just where some 
of these have landed. First, you will have popularity, 
and then you will have oblivion. 





JEREMIAH’S COMPLAINING PLACE 153 


Jeremiah tells us how to go about the business. 
There seems to be a fixed notion that he was a sour, 
pessimistic, old fellow. But read his prophecy through, 
and you will find that the man did his complaining in 
his prayer closet, that he never complained about God. 

Consider a threefold function of this experience. 
First, it rested him. It is a great relief to find someone 
who will listen to you. There would have been no 
psalm book if men had not felt like that. Nearly all 
our hymns arose from a desire to communicate some- 
thing to God. 

Jeremiah went into his prayer closet to complain to 
God, and said: “O Lord, you have deceived me. You 
are stronger than I, and I cannot beat You in the open; 
but I will never open my mouth about You again. I 
have been deceived and beguiled. You said You would 
make me a defenced city and an iron pillar, and here I 
am like a pet lamb led to the slaughter. I am not going 
to open my mouth.” I am very sure there was a kindly 
smile on our Father’s face. That is why you cannot 
reduce the prayer necessities of human nature to writ- 
ten forms. Prayers must be as broad as our lives. 
We have an idea that God is a peculiarly sensitive 
gentleman, with a certain exacting requirement as to 
forms of speech, as though He would be offended with 
the prattle of His children. But He is not. He over- 
hears every muttering of man’s soul. All of our peti- 
tions and yearnings are passed through the transform- 
ing medium of the Spirit that knows the groanings of 
the human heart and makes intercessions for us before 
the throne of God. Have you forgotten the interces- 
sory work of Him who cried out in the hour of His 
greatest need, “ My God, my God, why hast thou for- 
saken me?” There are times when conventional forms 


154 STRAINS OF OLD EXPERIENCES 


of prayer won’t do. There are times when we must go 
to God and speak out just what we have on our minds, 
just let the thing out. It rested Jeremiah, and when a 
man gets rested things begin to clear. He begins to 
see the landscape. — 

And then, it encouraged him. You know, sometimes 


our hearts make such a racket that we cannot hear what _ 2 


is going on outside. That was the trouble with Jere- 
miah. He had said he would never open his mouth 
about God again; he had said things that were almost 
blasphemous. But in the silence that followed he hears 
just without his closet the scornful shouts of the de- 
faming multitude. He thought of them in their sin 
and blindness, and then he thought of his own interests. 
Suddenly there broke out in him a devouring fire in his 
very bones. He could not be silent, he felt that he must 
go among the people and declare the word of God. 
You will find you have a deal more religion than you 
thought, when you let loose your complaint. 

But more than all, it made the prophet strong. Let 
me turn to an earlier experience. After eighteen years 
of successful work under Josiah, Jeremiah came to the 
conclusion that he had been a failure. Reverses had 
come under Jehoiakim. He would give up his work 
and return to Anathoth. It was a mistake, he thought, 
to continue to be a minister. “I was beguiled into the 
ministry,” he said, “I will go back to Anathoth to be 
with the boys and girls I used to know and settle down 
to easy middle life.” He went back, but things were 
not what they ought to have been. The old associates 
_ began to whisper about him, and when he saw peoples’ 
heads together he knew they were talking about him. 
He felt very much like a rabbit in a forest with glaring 
eyes of wildcats staring at him, expecting every minute 





JEREMIAH’S COMPLAINING PLACE 155 


to be eaten up. Then he went into his prayer closet and 
demanded of the Lord some explanation of this un- 
speakable experience. If ever a man had reason to find 
fault, he believed he had. He wanted some word of 
comfort, but instead he got the most severe shock of his 
life. God said to Jeremiah, “ If thou hast run with the 
footmen, and they have wearied you, how are you 
going to contend with horses, and if in a land of peace 
you have been secure, what are you going to do in the 
jungles of the Jordan?” ‘This plotting of the villagers 
of Anathoth is just like running with footmen. You 
wait until you see what Jehoiakim and the princes of 
the great city will do to you. You are complaining in 
a land of peace and security. Just wait until you get 
into the jungles of the Jordan, you will come to know 
what real trouble is. “‘ Cheer up, Jeremiah! The worst 
is yet to come!” 

What happened? Jeremiah stood up like a pillar. A 
new vision of manhood came to him. He realised that 
his work was just beginning, and he went back to the 
Jerusalem from which he had fled a coward and a 
craven, and stood up in the temple area before the 
princes and the people, and he told that crowd, “ If you 
don’t mend your ways, this temple and this city will be 
as Shiloh, a heap of ruins.” And the mob gathered 
around him and said, “ Let us kill him.” And Jeremiah 
said, “ You can kill me, but you cannot silence me.” 
There is a man who has been made an iron pillar. 
There is a man who has been hardened in the right 
direction. 

There was a time when Jeremiah said something like 
this: “ Oh, that I had a lodging place in the wilderness 
far away! Oh, that I might flee away and leave my 
people!” You know what he wanted, He wanted 


156 STRAINS OF OLD EXPERIENCES 


companions, but without responsibility. He did not 
want solitude. You know how it was in those days in 
houses along desert roads. Men would meet, going 
east and west and pass the time of day. It is as we do 
on the deck of an Atlantic steamer. Jeremiah wanted 
to get away from his people for a time. Where is the 


minister who has been with his people long enough to ~ 


know them and love them, and realise how imperfect 
they are, who has not often felt: “ Oh, I would like to 
leave these people! I would like to take this church 
and congregation and drop both into the great gray sea 
somewhere and stand on the shore and watch the bub- 
bles come up and know that I would never see them 
again’’? Ifa man feels like that, some of these days 
an opportunity is coming to him. When Nebuchad- 
rezzar came down and destroyed Jerusalem and started 
on his return towards Babylon, somebody said to him: 


“You know that old chap Jeremiah? Well, he has not 


been against us. In fact, he has been telling these 
people that they would better yield. Let us take him 
along with us.” And Nebuchadrezzar sent someone 
with the invitation: “‘Come along, old chap. You 


have done your duty for forty-four years. Come over 


to Babylon. Ezekiel and all the good people are over 


there.” But Jeremiah said, “ No; I cannot leave my 
people.’ And what people they were! There was not 


a man among them who could understand him; not a 
man among them who loved him; and they took him 


down to Egypt and killed him; so that he died in an 


alien country, far, far from the land he loved. 
Is it any wonder that six hundred years later when 


the men of Judah saw Jesus walking in their midst 


they said, “Is not this Jeremiah? ”’ 


Life does not begin to be great until you have felt 






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Rigas PIR Ee 


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JEREMIAH’S COMPLAINING PLACE 157 


the inspiring opposition of a hostile world. You can- 
not love this world as you should and sacrifice yourself 
for it, until you estimate its power of doing you hurt at 
its right value. Some of us like the nest, we dread the 
arena. But we will never amount to anything until we 
get into the arena. You cannot know your place in the 
arena unless you have your escapes. It may be in your 
prayer closet, or it may be in your imagination on high 
places. Just think of the mountain tops where you can 
get a broad vision. ‘I remember one day sitting alone | 
on Calton Hill in Edinburgh. The clouds were broken 
a bit and here and there the sun was breaking out in 
purple glory. You could see west to the Forth Bridge, 
and to the north to the Fifeshire Hills and directly in 
front you could see the Castle. And ever and anon 
through the murk of the storm, you could see those 
depths of the sky that Wordsworth talks so much 
about. Suddenly, as I was sitting brooding above the 
smoke and noise of the great city, I saw an old peasant 
climbing labouriously up the hill. He sat down beside 
me and looked in silence a while, just like a Scotchman, 
and then turned to me and said, “ Have you got a 
match?” “Yes.” And then he pulled out an old pipe 
and lighted it. I looked at him out of the tail of my 
eye. He had on one of these things that peasants wear 
around their necks in lieu of a collar. His coat was 
soiled and ragged, but there was a strange mystic glow 
in the old face. He said: “ Do you know, I am a shoe- 
maker by trade. I live down there by the Cowgate. 
It is an unclean place. There is swearing and drinking 
and fighting there all day long, and every now and then 
I come up here and take a look at this to remind me 
that I am not all flesh’ When you get high above the 
noise and travail of the world, when you follow our 


158 STRAINS OF OLD EXPERIENCES 


Saviour’s example and seek the mountains, how differ- 
ent things seem in the softening glow of God’s great — 
kindliness! It gives you the feeling that you are not all — 
flesh, you are not wholly a part of the strange play of 
material forces surging around our planet, but there © 
dwells in you an immortal soul, dear unto God, bought 4 
by Christ and aflame with the great message of love. 
Build your prayer closets on the mountain tops! Go — 
into them with your plan. Then go out boldly and © 
stand up for Jesus Christ in the world that slew Him. 
It will happen to you as once it happened to a company 
of obscure men without the support of influence or any- ~ 
thing of the sort, who thrust themselves into the murky 
darkness of the Graeco-Roman world with a story of — 
the Cross that made them worthy witnesses to the: E 
| glorious Gospel of the blessed God. a 





XII 
INVESTMENTS IN THE PROMISES OF GOD 


“And I bought the field of Hanameel, my uncle’s son, 
that was in Anathoh. * * * For thus saith the Lord 
of hosts, the God of Israel; Houses and fields and vine- 
fon ie be possessed again in this land.”—JEREMIAH 

md ru Oy 


ELIGIOUS men do many surprising things, 
R things that are disconcerting, perplexing, and 
often impractical. They do things that are ex- 
tremely costly to themselves and take positions: that 
' from,a world point of view appear imprudent and un- 
wise. Yet as time. passes we are obliged to say that 
they acted with peculiar insight into the ways of God, 
and history eventually justifies their position. 

The reason they behave in this way is because they 
are walking by faith. They see Him Who is invisible. 
They believe in’'God, and on that account have a certain 
insight into the ways of God. And so while their 
actions from the point of view of worldly prudence 
often appear impractical, they somehow or other are 
found to be on the side of great events. 

The reason which underlies the actions of men of 
faith is born out of religious experience, and this is the 
point of view from which to approach the puzzling real 
estate transaction alluded to in this text. 

At the time this event took place Jerusalem was be- 
‘sieged by Nebuchadrezzar’s army. Some years before 
this he had carried away to Babylon the flower of the 

159 


160 STRAINS OF OLD EXPERIENCES 


nation, and now after an interval his army had ap- 
peared again and the city was being besieged. The 
guttural voices of alien foes could be heard around their 
walls. From afar they could descry the camp fires at 
night, and there were times when even the thunderous 
tread of the mighty host would strike fear into their 
craven hearts. The best friend of the nation, the 
prophet Jeremiah, had been put in prison in the king’s 
house, because he had dared to tell the truth. 

It is easy to see that at such a time the cost of food 
would be constantly increasing; that the value of the 


land would be absolutely nil; that the enemy would — 


overrun the fields, taking the cattle, destroying the farm 
buildings and driving the population into the city where 
money alone would be greatly in demand. At such a 
time, with characteristic Jewish shrewdness, a certain 
relative of Jeremiah who owned a. bit of land in 
Anathoth in the outskirts of Jerusalem, a part in fact of 


the old family estate, bethought himself of an oppor-— 
tunity to get rid of it. He knew very well the folly of - 


offering it to any real estate dealer. No farmer could 
use it and it would offer no attractions to a business 
man in the way of investment; but that old cousin of 
his was a bit quixotic, and had curious notions about 
the land. 

It is a strange thing that the obsession still prevails 
and there are certain types of business men who ima- 
gine that a religious man can be persuaded to buy 
something that nobody else will have. 

So Hanameel went away up to Jerusalem and sought 
out his old cousin, on whom doubtless he had not called 
in the days of his adversity, and said: “My dear 
cousin, there is a bit of land that belongs to the family 
in Anathoth, where you were born and brought up, and 


Sen a a a 
a ee ee Se ee gee ee 





INVESTMENTS IN THE PROMISES 161 


you know how tenacious our family is of its holdings. 
Many of the dearest associations of your life are cen- 
tered there. Buy it and own it for yourself.” 

I think I can see Jeremiah looking at him out of his 
strong, sorrow-marked face, seeing straight through 
this proposition, quite aware of the trickery involved 
in the suggestion. 

Yet, after reflection, he said: “I will buy it.” 

He had probably laid by a little money (an old and 
lonely man would naturally lay up a bit against a rainy 
day), and so from his scanty savings he paid down the 
purchase price and took most meticulous care to secure 
a legal title to the property. He had the deed drawn by 
proper authorities, certified by witnesses required by 
law; and then he sutnmoned Baruch, his Boswell, and 
required of him that he put the deed in an earthen pot, 
which was an ancient substitute for a safe-deposit box, 
and told him to bury it in the ground and remember 
where he left it, in order that he might, if need be, be 
able to prove his ownership of the land. 

Why did he buy it? 

Any business man can see that it had no more 
tangible value to Jeremiah than a bit of ground that one 
might have purchased in No Man’s Land during the 
World War. He did not buy it because he was a senti- 
mentalist ; and although the greatest patriot of his time 
his motive was not that of patriotism. He was not 
influenced by what Chesterton has called “the queer 
innocence of the afternoon of life”; that guileless 
belief sometimes found in old men in the value of 
strange and quixotic possessions. 

He bought it because he saw that a refusal would be 
tantamount to a denial of his faith and a repudiation of 
the principles of a prophetic ministry of more than 


162 STRAINS OF OLD EXPERIENCES 


forty years’ duration. God had assured him that al- 
though the children of Israel must go away to Babylon 
for seventy years, eventually He would bring them 
back and restore them to their old privileges. For 
years the faithful prophet had preached this doctrine up 
and down the land and had not been believed, and he 
saw at once that if he refused to back his faith with his 
money it would be easy for men to say something like 
this: “Oh yes! You think all right about God. You ~— 
preach about Him, but you are not willing to practice 
what you preach.” a 

Still Jeremiah was human, and after the transaction _ 
was completed he was overtaken by a feeling that per- 
haps after all he had made a bad bargain. He went ~ 
into his prayer-closet and laid the matter before God. _ 
When he came out he had God’s answer, for this is — 
what the Lord said to him: “ Fear not, Jeremiah, for @ 


houses and vineyards and fields shall be in ccna % 


again in this land.” 
And when he heard that he was content. 
Now had the prophet reasoned as men usually do, 


he would have said something like this: “This is a — 
hopeless proposition from the point of view of worldly 
prudence. I am getting on in life and I cannot expect 
to live until the captivity is over. I cannot hope to 
occupy or use this land during the period of the cap- — 
tivity. So far as the material value is concerned it is 


nothing. If I purchase it I have put my money ina — 
bag with holes. On that account I am inclined to reject — 
the investment as contrary to worldly prudence.” q 

But Jeremiah held a different view. He reasoned — 
that God’s promises transformed impossibilities into — 
actualities, and whatever God promises becomes for us © 
opportunity, and opportunities that come to us from — 





INVESTMENTS IN THE PROMISES 163 


the promises of God constitute commands. So he 
thought, and so he behaved. 

This fact has vast suggestiveness for us; for if you 
will reflect upon it you will see that the values of life 
turn upon our choices, and that our choices are usually 
influenced by one or the other of two idea-systems. 
We all live very mixed lives, and the ideas that in- 
fluence us rarely attain the dignity of what we might 
call systems, yet sooner or later we are going to be 
influenced by the one or the other of these systems 
which tend to fix the trend of character. 

One system is based upon the idea that all values 
that are worth struggling for are derived from their 
relationship to ourselves,—what we call self-interest. 
The other system of ideas revolves around the con- 
- ception of God, so that the life of man is God-centered, 
not self-centered. Such a man will reason that values 
are determined by the approval of God. If it costs 
pain and suffering, or even death, still the price is well 

worth paying for the goodwill of God. 

A man of the world who has no vision of unseen 
realities when thinking of investments will proceed 
upon some such hypothesis as this: He will say: “In 
the first place, I am looking for the greatest degree of 
certainty.” ; 

But there are very few certainties in the world, and 
so experience teaches us to get hold of something that 
has a high degree of probability. If a man make an 
investment from this point of view he expects event- 
ually to profit by it. It is not a dead certainty, but it 
has a high degree of probability, and on that account 
he is inclined to take the risk. 

Now if you judge this proposition of Hanameel by 
such a standard you can readily see that it is an im- 


164 STRAINS OF OLD EXPERIENCES 


possible suggestion. What chance, for instance, would 
he have had with a real estate lawyer in New York 
City? So whatever reason Jeremiah had we must look 
for it in some other region as expressing an entirely 
different-idea system. 

The religious man, that is to say, the man to whom 
God has opened the wonders of the unseen world, who 
has come to realise, in the language of Hocking, that 
“faith is anticipated attainment,’ reasons somewhat 
after this fashion: “‘I believe that God is the Lord of 
the world. I believe that He orders the destinies of 


men according to a fixed and unalterable purpose. [ ~ 


believe that men of faith will be admitted by degrees 
into the comprehension of that majestic plan. I am 
willing, therefore, to venture my life, money and time 
on the will of God. I will not make immediate profit 
a condition of service. Neither will [ shirk hardship or 
denial, but I will courageously stake my all on the will 
of God, because I believe in the promises of God.” 


The distinction alluded to here is suggested by the. 


conversation our Saviour had with Simon Peter at 
Czesarea Philippi. Peter had confessed Him as Lord, 


and then remonstrated with Christ because He had ~ 


suggested He was going to Jerusalem and put His life ~ 
in jeopardy. Peter was reasoning as any man would — 
reason, somewhat in this fashion: “ Why put yourself 
in jeopardy, or take risks that can be avoided? Why — 
not remain here in Galilee, where you are understood ~ 
and loved, and avoid the contention and danger of the © 


Jerusalem mob?” 


Our Saviour replied: “ Get behind me, Satan! For | 


you savour of the things of men, and not of the things — 
of God.” 


In other words Peter was thinking like a man rather | 








ee” 
———— 


‘ 


INVESTMENTS IN THE PROMISES 165 


than thinking like God. How does a man think when 
left alone? Withdraw the influence of religion or 
morality or enlightened benevolence from the control 
of the man’s thought and how will he express himself ? 
He will put it to himself something like this: “ Never 
jeopardise your life or your money unless you are 
obliged to do so. Never take any risks that you can 
avoid. Never invest in anything where there may be 
a possible loss. In other words, spare yourself at all 
hazards.”’ | 

But our Saviour was thinking as God thinks, some- 
what after this fashion: “ Do your duty at all hazards; 
and if doing your duty means to die, then die, but do 
your duty. Follow the right path wherever it leads, no 
matter what it costs. Follow the vision that faith opens 


_ to you and it will eventually lead you to values of an 


enduring kind which the world cannot take away.” 

That was the way Jeremiah reasoned. Had he re- 
fused to buy the field or put in jeopardy his life- 
savings, that act of refusal alone would have been a 
repudiation of his teaching concerning religion. But 
by investing his hard-earned savings in a field that had 
no immediate market value, he proclaimed in an immor- 
tal way his profound belief that this world is God’s 
world, that God’s promises turn impossibilities into 
actualities, and that out of them issue opportunities 
which constitute for faith the nature of commands. 

When we consider the program the Almighty has 
offered His people under both dispensations, we must 
be impressed, if we have any historical imagination, 
with its sublime audacity. It is nothing more or less 
than an invitation to believers in all lands and Jin all 
times to undertake that which from a worldly point of 
view is absolutely impossible, 


166 STRAINS OF OLD EXPERIENCES 


One of the most audacious sayings in the Bible is in 
an early psalm. ‘“‘ Ask of me,” says God, “and I will 
give you the heathen for an inheritance.” Who and 
what were the Jews at that time? An insignificant 
people, without wealth and military strength, and with 
but a very shadowy hold on fundamental things; a poor 
despised and provincial folk, while the inheritance was 
held by the alien, unbelieving, rich and efficient world. 
No student of history can read the account of Jere- 
miah’s purchase without remembering the story in 
Livy, when Hannibal’s army was besieging Rome. 


The ground on which he pitched his tent was put up at 


auction in Rome and bought at a great price. That was 
a fine thing, but the difference was this: Rome at that 
time was sound to the core, while Jeremiah’s Jerusalem 
was nothing but a dump, absolutely without defence 
and certain in the end to be destroyed. Yet Jeremiah 
risked all he had on the promises of God, because he 
believed that the Lord would restore the people to 
the land. 


Will you notice how profoundly applicable this prin- 


ciple is to the days of our Lord and His disciples, the 


beginning of Christianity? ‘“‘ Ask of me, and I will. 


give you the heathen for an inheritance.’’ Was there 
ever, from the point of view of an unbelieving world, 
a more pitiable spectacle than that little group of insig- 
nificant fisher folk gathered about Christ on the night 
in which He was betrayed, when at the conclusion of 
His talk with them He said, “In this world you shall 
have tribulation, but be of good cheer, I have overcome 
the world.”” The world of that day meant the empire 
of Czesar. Rome was mistress of the world, rich, ef- 
ficient, learned, strong and able; and against her ma- 
terial and intellectual resources was pitted the voice of 


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el nal 
os 


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INVESTMENTS IN THE PROMISES 167 


God issuing from the testimony of a small group of 
unimportant men. 

When Paul and his associates went into that world 
of brilliant culture, of adventurous intellect, of refined 
and subtle religions, of strongly entrenched traditions, 
and of glittering material splendour, with nothing but 
the unadorned, simple word of God, could anything be 
more audacious, or anything to the eye of unbelief seem 
more impossible than such a task? Yet we know what 
happened, and how those men transformed the ancient 
world. Unto them we must give our meed of praise 
and gratitude for bringing us the gospel. They in- 
vested all they had in the promises of God, and we 
know what happened. They bought a field in Ana- 
thoth, and out of that field has come the spiritual sus- 
tenance of the world. 

Look around you, today. It 1s a grave, somber world 
in which we live where many who formerly lived care- 
less lives have grown old before their time as they con- 
template the spectacle of a world about to take a new 
direction ; experimenting afresh with its ideas of gov- 
ernment, philosophy and religion. It is a period 
comparable only to those great epochal changes like 
Alexander’s conquest, the fall of Rome, or the Renais- 
sance, and as yet no man wise enough has arisen to 
indicate its goal or to describe the constituent ele- 
ments of its experience. The Christian Church stands 
sorely pressed on every field and on every front. 
Whether it be from the seemingly prosperous church 
in the heart of an American city, or from the little 
conventicle in some African forest, or Chinese vil- 
lage, it is the story of a tremendously concentrated and 
diabolical process against the things of the Spirit. 
The Church of Christ today is standing very much 


168 STRAINS OF OLD EXPERIENCES 


as Jeremiah did in his day facing Nebuchadrezzar’s 
army, or as Paul looking out upon the irresistible might 
of Rome. | 

Consider for a moment some of the things we are 
contending with: | _y 

Paul and his associates had one advantage over usin 
respect to their missionary enterprises: They went out 
into a world of spiritual hunger with a brand-new 
religion. Today Christianity is an old religion. People 
think they understand it, they think they know what it 
is. You cannot go about the world, even in heathen 
lands, without seeing Chrisitan churches and meeting 
with Christian evangelists and Christian influence. 
People discuss its doctrines and profess to understand 
its creeds. They are familiar with its divisions and 
sects, and know something of its mutations and changes 
as it has passed through history to the present day. 
They are painfully and terribly aware of our inconsis- 
tencies. When we speak to men about Christ and the  — 
Gospel it seems as if we were telling an old, old story, a — 
story that is worn out and almost outgrown, for we are 
facing a new knowledge, a new concept of the world, a _ 7 
new philosophy, growing out of the enormous expan- 
sion of our material universe as the result of the ever- 
advancing influence of science. | 

Go into the great towns anywhere. One of the sad- 
dest sights to contemplate is the slow but inevitable 
retreat of the churches from the congested centers of — 
population ; the amazing attractiveness of the suburbs; 
the fear of down town sections of great cities. 

Or go into the suburbs and see the churches that are 
quietly going to sleep. Great sleazy, well-dressed con- 
gregations that have lost feeling and sympathy about 
the salvation of man, where churches resemble clubs — 





INVESTMENTS IN THE PROMISES 169 


and delicatessen shops, and where preaching is often so 
vapid and spineless it is not worth hearing. 

Go anywhere you like in Christian lands, or out into 
the heathen world; it is the same everywhere. A man 
without faith would surely say it is just as quixotic to 
put your life, or money, or time in the Christian ad- 
venture as it was for Jeremiah to invest his savings in 
the bit of land in Anathoth. 

I have always felt that until we have the courage to 
look reality squarely in the face, to recognise our weak- 
nesses and indulge in a remorseless criticism of our- 
selves and our ways, that we will never have a desire 
to turn our hearts to God, or get the power into life that 
He is so eager to give. The present weakness of the 
American people is that we do not know how to criti- 
cise ourselves. There is no nation in the world so badly 
in need of some kind of saving discipline. 

We cannot criticise ourselves. We are afraid to look 
facts in the face. A man who has courage enough to 
confront the American people with facts about the 
moral and spiritual trend of life is usually called a 
pessimist. What is a pessimist? He is not a man who 
has the courage to face facts, but a man who, after 
looking them in the face, confesses he has no remedy 
for them. If we could only realise the stimulus of 
difficulties and get away from the rose water idea of 
religion, and see these things in a bigger way, we 
should thank God and take courage that He brought us 
to the kingdom for such a time as this! 

Take, for instance, foreign missions. Ask modern 
congregations to invest in foreign missions and what 
do they often say in reply? They tell us of what some 
business man has said about conditions in India, and 
of how impudent a thing it is for western people to ask 


170 STRAINS OF OLD EXPERIENCES 


the Chinese to abandon their native religions for the 
sake of Christianity. "They remind us of the slow 
progress of the missionary cause and so tighten their 
purse strings and avoid an investment in the field of 
Anathoth. Can we wonder that people say we do not 
practice what we preach? The truth is the Christian 
Church as a whole has never yet ventured to live by 
faith. We are fond of calling ourselves “ pilgrims,” 
yet nobody ever became a pilgrim who rode in a Pierce- 
Arrow car or lived on an income of ten thousand dol- 
lars a year. The pilgrim is a man with a staff and loin 
cloth and is usually found in the dusty lanes among the 
people, and he is particularly distinguished in this that 
he has a large investment in the field of Anathoth. 

Have we ever had the courage to take our Saviour 
seriously when He said, “ You must deny yourself and 
take up your cross”? Sometimes I fear we are very 
like Peter. When Peter heard this kind of thing from 
the Master he took it for granted that he had made the 
great sacrifice, and on one occasion ventured to say: - 
““ Master, we have left all. Now what are we going to 
get in return?” | 

Well, what had he left? A ratty, old fishing boat on 
the lake of Galilee, so leaky it had to be baled out, an 
old, tattered, patched sail, and a few nets through which 
fish would dart, to his discomfort, because he was too 
lazy to mend them. This, and nothing more. 

What have we ever given up to be Christians? 
When have we ever given of our substance and our 
life, that someone might know Jesus Christ? Is it any 
wonder, then, that God withholds His gift of power? 

Let us consider the profitableness of this investment. 

What was it that underlay Jeremiah’s faith in the 


transaction? It was his faith in God’s promise. He — 





INVESTMENTS IN THE PROMISES 171 


believed the exiles were coming back to the land. I 
have often tried to imagine what happened seventy 
years later, when the first contingent under Joshua and 
Zerubbabel, returning from Babylon, approached the 
desolated city. I like to suppose they marched through 
the field of Anathoth, and remembered the prophet, 
dead and gone now these many years, but whose char- 
acter and words had left an indelible impression on 
their people. They must have said: ‘“ This is the very 
field, and there is the old farmstead. Do you remem- 
ber what Jeremiah said, and how at the time we did not 
believe him? Yet here we are in the land again, and 
the old man was right.” 

How does this fit into our problem? In this way: 
Viewed from the standpoint of worldly prudence such 
investments are foolish. If it appear difficult to im- 
press our great cities with the meaning of Christianity, 
or maintain our churches in the congested populations 
amid a babel of tongues, does it not seem hopeless to 
impress China, or Japan, or India with the power of 
Christ ? 

But the man of faith, who is influenced by a different 
idea-system, sees more in these fields than other men 
can. ‘The world is a safe investment for life and 
service because God Himself has holdings in it. Sup- 
pose I should offer you a proposition something like 
this: “I have a bit of oil land in Texas. The geolo- 
gists tell me that all signs are favourable. We are 
organising a company and have every reason to believe 
it will turn out a profitable investment.” The chances 
are you would decline the opportunity. But suppose 
that, in addition, I should be able to inform you that 
the Standard Oil Company had already underwritten 
seventy-five per cent. of the stock. That would change 


172 STRAINS OF OLD EXPERIENCES 


the aspect of the investment entirely, because experience 
has shown that great companies do not put their means 
and energies into losing propositions. 

This is a poor illustration of what I have in mind. 
If we have faith at all we must see that God Himself 
has invested His all in this world. The needs of hu- 
manity and the responsibilities of the Church have been 
underwritten by the Lord Jesus Christ. God’s promises 
are founded on God’s performances. When I look on 
the pierced hands of Jesus, I realise what it has cost 
Him to come into this world. He has suffered for it! 
He has invested the most costly of all possessions in its 
welfare, I mean pain. What we suffer for we cling to, 
fight for and mean to have. It is so with this world. — 
Superficially it looks as if it were a devil’s world. At 
times it appears to be man’s world. But when we look ~ 
upon the face of Christ, when we stand before the 


Cross, we realise that it is God’s world. And what — 


God has suffered for, what God’s Son has died for, 
God means to have. The world becomes the inheritance 
of the Church because Christ died for its salvation. 
This means that eventually God is going to have His 
own; He is going to have it through His Church; but 
He can never obtain what is His own, until we who 
profess to walk by faith accept the implications of 
discipleship. 

It is the deep current of disenchantment that has 
come to disturb our prosperity, especially since the war, 
which suggests to discerning minds the presence in our 
civilisation of many elements of disintegration which 
have in past times heralded the downfall of societies, 
and suggested new departures of the human race. One 
reason for this certainly is that men have lost com- 
munion with the living God. ‘They have “ forsaken 





INVESTMENTS IN THE PROMISES 173 


God, the fountain of living waters, and hewed them out 
cisterns, broken cisterns, that can hold no water.”’ The 
world is athirst, the cisterns are dry, and all about us 
men are calling with thickening voices, ““ Who will give 
us water to drink?” 

We have it. What are we going to do about it? If 
such reflections make one serious, they also exalt the 
privilege and opportunity of the disciple of Christ. 
What Christ has died for He means to have; on that 
account our investment is secure. Only we may have 
to wait for it, and while doing so invest increasingly 
in it. Nothing is plainer than this, that God is not a 
bit economical with our material resources. There is 
such a thing as the increasing cost of living with Christ. 
He does not hesitate to demand our property, to expend 
our energies, and sometimes to send His best and finest 
into the hottest fires of persecution. But at least He 
never asks us to go where He has not been before. He 
has carried the world of human necessity in the totality 
of its needs and pains. Because He has put His life in 
this investment He means to have it; He is going to 
have it through His Church. The only question is 
when? ‘The answer to this can be given when the 
people of God are willing to stand with Jeremiah, and 
in face of a scoffing and unbelieving multitude, invest 
their precious accumulations of time, and money, sym- 
pathy and service in the fields of Anathoth; which all 
about us at home and abroad, in spite of the blindness 
of many, are breaking out into abundant harvest, wait- 
ing for you and for me. 


XIII 
THE PROPHET OF VISIONS AND DREAMS | 


“ Then satd I, Ah Lord God! they say of me, Is he not 
a speaker of parables? ”—_FEIZEKIEL 20: 49. 


HERE are four things that we should know, 

in understanding an Old Testament prophet. 
First, his historical background. These proph- 

ecies belong to great historical movements, and we 


must first know the times, in order to understand the 
message. The next thing is to look for the personality _ 
behind the book. All these teachings originate in per- 
sonal experience, and the man behind the book is some- __ 
times more important than the book itself. Gerald 
Lee has remarked that “a book is a man’s heart shout- 


ing from the housetops.” That is especially true of — 


the prophets. The third thing is the characteristic or 


fundamental teachings of the prophecy. ‘Then the last 
thing is the application of the teachings to our own life, 
thought and time. | a 

The Old Testament prophets, particularly great men — 
like Isaiah, Jeremiah and Ezekiel, and including men — 
like Amos, Hosea, Micah, Habakkuk and Zephaniah, — 
belong to one of the most dramatic periods of the — 
world’s history. Let us take a broad view of that — 
period. Try to realise that Palestine was brought into 
world politics by reason of its location. Palestine lay — 
between Assyria and Egypt. It was impossible to 
approach either of these powers directly from the sea. 


174 





PROPHET OF VISIONS 175 


It was also impossible to approach them from the 
desert; so it was necessary, if there should be any 
communication of a commercial or military character 
between them, that it should take place through Pales- 
tine. In other words, Palestine occupied the same posi- 
tion in the political life of that time that Belgium 
occupied during the war. It became, in a sense, the 
battlefield of the world, and many great struggles and 
strategic campaigns in which Egypt, Babylonia and 
Assyria were involved were decided on Palestinian soil. 
That is why this country, otherwise so insignificant 
from a worldly point of view, was continually brought 
into the perspective of world politics. 

About the year 745 8. c., Tiglath-pileser started with 
a huge army, on his way to conquer Egypt and make 
himself a world power. Egypt was the only nation 
that could dispute that title with Tiglath-pileser; but 
to conquer Egypt he had to go through Palestine, and 
he had to hammer his way through a number of king- 
doms which had little or no offensive ability, but which 
had an irritating defensive ability. It was just as was 
the case with Belgium when she stopped the Kaiser on 
his way to Paris. 

It was during that period that Isaiah received his 
message. Isaiah died about 700 8B. c. Assyria was still 
fighting; Egypt was still unconquered. Assyria had 
possession of every kingdom in Palestine but Judah, 
with headquarters at Jerusalem. ‘Then for seventy 
years prophecy was silent. It was in the reign of 
Josiah that Jeremiah began to prophesy. Zephaniah 
appeared shortly before Jeremiah. We then come down 
that period to the destruction of Assyria, the rise of 
Babylon, the almost immediate involvement of Judah’s 
fortunes with Babylonian life, resulting in the Baby- 


176 STRAINS OF OLD EXPERIENCES 


lonian captivity. It is a very picturesque period. It 
was in that period of stress and strain, of war and 
blood and tears, that great prophets appeared. 

There are three facts of the reign of Josiah that we 
want to get clearly in mind. Josiah began to reign in 
his own right about the year 626 8. c. The first thing 
to note is the spiritual aims of the man. He came to a 
nation that had for more than sixty years suffered from 
a violent pagan reaction. The Temple was often 
neglected, and even where attention was paid to it 
pagan practices had come in. When he became fully 


conscious of this situation, Josiah wanted to revive 


the ancient religion, purify his city, and bring it 
back to God. That was a noble desire. But for 


some years he was unable to accomplish anything. — q 


About the year 621 B. c., when his people were seek- 
ing to restore the Temple, they found the Book of 


the Law, which, read in the presence of the people, 
aroused their conscience and what seemed to be a ~ 
permanent reform set in. The great preacher of this — 


reform was Jeremiah. 

The second thing to notice is the revival of the power 
of Egypt, and her effort to regain her sovereignty. — 
Pharaoh-Necho organised a great army and marched _ 


on Assyria in 608 B. c. When he came into Palestine, 


poor little Josiah challenged him to fight. The Egypt- q 
ian sent word to him substantially like this: “ You little 


man back in the hills, I have no quarrel with you. I 


am after bigger things. I will be your friend.” But, 
“No,” said Josiah, “I will fight!’ And he went out 
with a little army to the field of Megiddo and the 
Egyptian struck him a backhanded blow, and slew him. 
There died all expectation of a religious reform. — 
Pharaoh stayed long enough in the land to dethrone ~ 





PROPHET OF VISIONS 177 


Jehoahaz and put Jehoiakim on the throne. ‘Then 
Judah became a dependency of Egypt. 

Then he moved on. For many years Babylonia had 
been gaining in power. Pharaoh-Necho led an army 
against Nineveh, but Nebuchadrezzar met him at Car- 
chemish in 604 B. c. and destroyed his army. Then the 
Jews realised that they were face to face with a relent- 
less enemy. Read the first chapter of Habakkuk, if you 
want to see that described. There is an astonishingly 
beautiful description of the advance of this relentless 
army, as beautiful as you will find in Scripture. So 
these are the three things to remember: the spiritual 
ambition of Josiah, defeated by Egypt; the Egyptian 
renaissance in her effort to achieve new world power; 
and the rise of an entirely new world power, Babylon, 
in 607 B. c. 

This brings us to the “ Babylonian captivity.” There 
were two captivities. The kingdom of the north in 
722 B. C. was carried into captivity in Assyria—that is, 
ten tribes. The two tribes were left at Jerusalem, the 
southern kingdom, which lasted until 597 B. c., the 
year that Nebuchadrezzar took Jehoiachim to Babylon, 
and carried away captive the flower of the Jewish popu- 
lation. Eleven years later, he destroyed the city and 
took away all of the people, except a handful of com- 
mon folk, who finally drifted to Egypt and disappeared 
from the story. | 

Our prophet Ezekiel went out from Judah to Baby- 
lon in the first contingent of captives in the year 597 
B. c. The prophets of that period as a whole were 
Jeremiah and Ezekiel. Jeremiah’s ministry covered 
forty-four years. He was the prophet of the decline 
and fall of Judah; he closed the epoch of Hebrew na- 
tionality and opened the era of the Jewish Church. It 


178° STRAINS OF OLD EXPERIENCES 


was the aim of Ezekiel to complete the work that 
Jeremiah began. 

Ezekiel was born about the year 621 B. c., the time 
of the finding of the Book of the Law. He grew up in 
stormy times. He seems never to have been young. 
He was an old young man, or a mature young man, at 
the time he went out with the first captivity. He did 
not begin to prophesy until 592 B. c.—that is, he had 
five years of silence in Babylon before he began to utter 
the Word of God. 

The Book of Ezekiel consists of forty-eight chapters. 
Unlike any other of the major prophets, it is a very — 
orderly book. Ezekiel is very careful, ordinarily, to — 
date his prophecies. He tells you the time and usually 
the place where they were uttered. The book is divided 
equally into two parts—of twenty-four chapters each. 
The first twenty-four deal with the first part of his 
problem. They cover the period of obscurity, loneli- 


ness and humiliation. ‘The second twenty-four cover — 1 
the period of his popularity. They deal with the latter © ~ 


half of the problem left to him by Jeremiah. Now the 
problem was twofold. In the first place, he had to 
destroy the false hopes of the nation; and, in the second 
place, he had to create and stimulate the spiritual hopes 
of the Jewish Church. The first twenty-four chapters 
concern themselves with the work of destroying the 
false hope of the nation concerning its life and destiny. 
The second half is concerned with the desire to create 
and stimulate the hopes of the Jewish Church, that 
small community gradually being called out and shaped 
up within the corrupt nation. The task of Ezekiel 
was very difficult. It was made difficult, in the be- 
ginning at any rate, by the fact that so long as 
Jerusalem remained inviolate (which was between the 





PROPHET OF VISIONS 179 


first and the second captivities) it was almost im- 
possible to get the exiles to believe that their captivity 
was anything more than a summer picnic, a kind of 
prolonged Cook’s tour at the expense of Babylon in a 
foreign land. 

You know how it was in those days. The city was 
frequently the head of the state. So long as the city 
remained inviolate, the state remained intact ; but if you 
destroyed the city you destroyed the state. When 
Nebuchadrezzar carried off the first contingent to Baby- 
lon he left Jerusalem standing under a vassal king. 
Hence these captives took a rather optimistic view of 
their situation, so much so that false prophets came 
over and told them such things as they would like to 
believe. Jeremiah took it up and wrote a beautiful let- 
ter of counsel. He said to them: “ Marry and settle 
down and buy property and enter into business. You 
are going to stay there a long time; but remember, God 
has given you a future and a hope. Don’t give up your 
hope. Don’t abandon your future. Some day He will 
bring you back.’ But they did not listen to Jeremiah. 
They listened to the false prophets. So when Ezekiel 
would tell them the significance of the discipline, and 
try to make them see that it was a searching period of 
judgment, they would not listen. Further, when he 
told them of the power of Babylon and the weakness 
and paralysis of Judah, they would not hear because 
they did not want to hear. You know, it almost 
parallels the experience of Lord Roberts and a small 
company of enlightened men in England who tried to 
wake up that nation to the menace of German militar- 
ism. ‘The thing was going on right under their very 
eyes, and men not only would not listen to Lord Rob- 
erts, but someone had the nerve to suggest that he 


180 STRAINS OF OLD EXPERIENCES 


should have his pension taken away, because he had 
called upon England to leave the fleshpots, put on its 
armour, and go forth to fight. They called him a 
pessimist, just as they called Jeremiah a pessimist and 
a traitor for telling the truth. | 

E:zekiel’s mission was made difficult, in the second 
place, by his temperament. There is a lot of humour 
in Ezekiel, humour of a grim sort. Here is an illus- 
tration of it. ‘Then I came to them of the captivity 
at Tel-abib, that dwelt by the river of Chebar, and I sat 
where they sat, and remained there astonished among 


them seven days.” He tried to be ‘a good mixer!” — 1 


Have you never seen that tragic thing in churches 
where the minister, a sort of middle-aged, scholarly, 
dignified, respectable individual, will, in response to an 
imaginary duty, go into the primary department and 
make a fool of himself trying to get in touch with the 
children? Well, that is what Ezekiel tried to be—“ a 
good mixer.’ He went where the people were selling 


their wares, talking over religion and politics and tell- ~~ 


ing stories. He sat where they sat chockablock to- 
gether—but he had nothing to say! He just sat there 
dumb and astonished. I can imagine them saying to 
one another, “ Here is this old killjoy of a prophet 
come around to take all the pleasure out of our lives.” 
He was just like a preacher at a picnic. 

And then Ezekiel was greatly embarrassed by the 
fact that he was one of those men who could not open 
his mouth without uttering a parable any more than he 
could open his eyes without seeing a vision. He suf- 
fered so much in the estimation of the people that one 
day when the Almighty told him to go and tell them a 
certain thing, he replied: “ Ah, Lord God, they say of 
me, “ Is he not a speaker of parables? We do not know 





PROPHET OF VISIONS 181 


what he means; we do not understand him. He talks 
a language we cannot comprehend!’ ”’ 

Ezekiel shows his type of mind in the description of 
his call. He went out one day and looked up into the 
sky and began to meditate in the desert. The wind 
arose. Out of the sky a fire-fringed cloud leaped. It 
grew blacker and blacker. Then there appeared a 
chariot, with guardians of four faces, with wheels 
within wheels, full of eyes, with the wheels running in 
all directions. Suddenly there appears a throne, and on 
it One like unto a man. In the blinding fire he sees an 
appearance of the likeness of the glory of God. And 
then, he said, ‘‘ I heard a voice, and when I heard that 
voice I fell down on my face.” That is Ezekiel’s way 
of telling us that he had a vision of God. 

What troubles us in the interpretation of apocalyptic 
symbolism is that our ideas are formed upon Greek 
rather than Hebrew models. The Greek model is the 
model of proportion. Everything is in its place. But 
the Jew is not appealing to the eye at all. The Greek 
did. The Jew is appealing to the mind. He does not 
ask how the thing looks; but his idea is: ““ How many 
different things can I get into that picture? Each thing 
will mean something.” Now the Jew never thought 
abstractly like the Greek. That is why you could not 
write the New Testament in the Hebrew language. 
The Hebrew could not think of sin. He was always 
talking about sinners. He says, “O~-Lord, do I not 
_ hate them that hate thee?” The Jew had to use images 
to represent his ideas. 

Now take the wheels. They are very grotesque. If 
you wish to realise how grotesque they are, take a look 
at Diirer’s pictures of the apocalypse. The wheels 
represent our idea of omniscience. They were rolling 


182 STRAINS OF OLD EXPERIENCES 


in every direction and they were full of eyes and they 


were looking everywhere. ‘There is also the idea of 
omnipotence. He puts in all the things he can in order 
to tell you that he has seen God. He is trying to tell 
you what Paul means when he says, “ The whole thing 
passes understanding.” And then he fell down on 
his face. 

God said, “ Stand upon thy feet, and I will speak 
with thee.” One reason why we cannot understand 
God is because we are down on our faces too much, 
with a sort of spurious humility, and without self- 


respect ; without straight, up-an-down, honest, sincere - a 


manhood we can never expect to know much of God. 
God does not like a sneak any better than we do. 


“Stand upon thy feet, and I will speak with thee.” — . 


And then he goes on to state what God had to say to 
him. So much for the illustration of the curious quali- 
ties of the man’s mind. | 


Now let us look at some of the distinct things he 4 


teaches. First, we shall take the prophecies of the first 
period. The purpose of these first twenty-four chap- 
ters is to give us a record of the efforts Ezekiel made 


in the period of his obscurity—that is, prior to the fall 


of Jerusalem in 586 B. c.—to convince the Jewish exiles 
in Babylon that God intended it should be a long period 
of judgment. It was to be the destruction of a nation 
in order that they might be a church. They did not 
know the difference between patriotism and religion. 
We do not know in America yet. I think there are 
some people who are going to find out. We have dis- 
covered that there is an immense difference between 
civilisation and the Kingdom. You can knock civilisa- 
tion to pieces and you may not hurt the Kingdom. The 
Jews thought, “If you destroy our national ambitions, 





—— = 
Se ae ae 


& 





PROPHET OF VISIONS 183 


take away our racial glory-—then what becomes of reli- 
gion?”’ Ezekiel’s hearers were very much like ortho- 
dox, spiritually minded creatures before the war. 
Ezekiel was trying to tell them that religion was one 
thing and patriotism another, that the Kingdom of God 
was one thing and Jewish nationalism another. 

Let us pick out two or three significant visions of 
this period by which Ezekiel sought to impress his 
lesson on the mind of the people. First, there is the 
prophecy concerning the princes in chapter nineteen. 
It contains the parable of the lioness and the whelps. 
He tells of a lioness that brought forth whelps and how 
they grew up and became leaders. One fell in a trap, 
one was killed by a wild beast, one was carried into 
captivity, and so on. One by one their princes, their 
leaders, Jehoahaz, Jehoiakim, Jehoiachin were taken 
away. Ezekiel was trying to tell them that if the 
princes were taken the people would go, too. That is to 
say, there was no stability in political life. They had 
neither diplomats, statesmen nor military leaders. 

Then he turns to a second vision and applies this to 
Jerusalem. This is an acted parable. Ezekiel came out 
one day with an old, rusty pot that had all kinds of foul 
scum on it. He built a fire under it and filled it with 
clean water. By that time, the people were interested. 
“ What is all this?” they said. Then he got some of 
the finest meat and dressed it with particular care. 
While he was engaged in this business a man came up 
and whispered to him, “ Your wife is desperately ill.” 
But he could not leave his work. And the people round 
about watched him. “ Why,” they said, “he doesn’t 
know how to cook.. He knows that pot is not clean. 
But look at him! He is putting clean meat into a filthy 
old pot!” Then it began to boil; the scum came to the 


184 STRAINS OF OLD EXPERIENCES 


top; foul odours passed from it. ‘Then the people said, 
“ Why, this is our wise old friend, but he does not know 
how to cook!” At that point, he turned around and 
preached his sermon. He said: “‘ This pot is Jerusalem. 
You may put the finest meat in this pot, the best men 
you can find, but you cannot keep the evil down. The 
whole city is foul. Therefore this pot must be taken 
out and be put in a desert place, and there it must be 
exposed to the sun and the rain for many days until it 
is cleansed. Then you can cook in it.” And then he 
said, “‘ That evening my wife died.” 


What is the meaning of this but that you cannot — 


make a city clean by putting a few good people into it? 
They have to be regenerated, and his argument was — 
that Jerusalem must be destroyed and lie a heap of — 
ruins for many years in the rain and the sun to be © 
cleansed, so God can put people in it after His own ~ 


heart. Then they came back with their argument. — 


“My dear fellow, you overlooked the fact that God 
_ looks after Jerusalem. There is His house on the hill. 
~ How can Jerusalem fall when God lives in it?” I do 
not know what Ezekiel thought about that, but one day ~ 
he had a vision, which is recorded in the eighth, ninth ~ 
and tenth chapters. God carried him to Jerusalem and — 
showed him what was in the town. He took him to 
the Temple; into the great chamber, and showed him 
how the elders were conducting worship with obscene ~ 
images away back in the sacred recesses. Here they — 
were bowing down before these things while outside — 
they were pretending to worship Jehovah. q 

Then God took him out into the women’s court, the 


outer court, and the women were worshipping Tammuz — 


Adonis. ‘Then He took him into the inner courts where 
the men were worshiping the sun. There all kinds of — 





PROPHET OF VISIONS 185 


idolatry were mixed up with true religion. The elders 
were thoroughly corrupt and hypocritical. Then he 
was taken out of the Temple and watched what went 
on. He saw the wheels and beasts and the chariot. 
And then he sees God pack up His belongings, taking 
everything that properly belonged in the Temple, and 
putting it in this chariot. Then it sails majestically 
off and disappears. It is the vision of the way God 
moved out of His house and abandoned the city to 
destruction. There he ends. These are prophecies 
characteristic of the first twenty-four chapters. They 
are concerned with three ideas: the instability of the 
political organisation ; the corruption of the people; and 
the determination of the Almighty to abandon them for 
a while. | 

Then came a period of silence. Men of great fore- 
sight are usually lonely men. High altitudes are always 
lonely. I remember that once in climbing in the Alps. 
We were planning to take several days to make a jour- 
ney. When we started there was a great company, in- 
cluding a number of Frenchmen. They were extremely” 
interesting, for nobody can talk as they do. Well, all 
kept together on the lower slopes until we reached the 
little inn. But the next day, when we were to start the 
real climb they were not there, and when we reached 
the high slopes of the mountain there was a great lone- 
liness. There were none there but mountain climbers. 
It is the same way with the pathfinders of the soul. 
There is this great loneliness for the man who has 
foresight enough to see further than most people, and 
so he has to be silent. Such was Ezekiel. Here is a 
book for the lonely minister who can see through a 
situation. 

Now let us turn to the prophecies of the second 


186 STRAINS OF OLD EXPERIENCES 


period. The purpose of these prophecies is to restore 
and stimulate the hopes of the Jewish Church. As a 
matter of fact, there was not-any Jewish Church until 
after the exile. If you will study the way in which it 
was evolved in the Old Testament, you will see God 
beginning with the family of Abraham. Out of that 
family came the tribes, and out of the tribes came the 
nation. ‘Then the nation, as it grew more and more 
corrupt, through political and commercial ambitions, 
furnished a spiritual remnant, and that remnant was 
carried along with the guilty over into Babylon, and it 


was the remnant that came back at the end of the exile 


and founded the Jewish Church. It was the business 
of Ezekiel, as it was of his predecessor, to encourage 
and sustain the faith of these godly men and women 
who were labouring to realise the Bea hare destinies of 
the chosen people. 


Notice how the period was inaugurated. Things 4 


went along, I. suppose, in the usual humdrum way. 
The prophet was silent, lonely and very much neglected. 
One day a ragged and starving man came staggering 
in upon the company of exiles and fell to the ground. 
He had just enough strength left to tell them that 
Jerusalem had fallen. They did not know that Nebu- 
chadrezzar had surrounded the city and destroyed it. 
They did not know that nearly all of their brethren 
were on the way, even then, to Babylon. But when 
they heard the news they forgot all their dreams; they 
- cast aside their foolish optimism; and said: “‘ Where on 
earth is the man of God? We want to know what this 
means.” Ezekiel in an instant became the most popular 
man in the company. Everybody began to discuss it 
“over the teacups,’ as we would say. They were ask- 
ing what it meant. Ezekiel was not deceived by his 





PROPHET OF VISIONS 187 


popularity. You know how he puts it: “And they 
come unto thee as the people cometh, and they sit 
before thee as my people, and they hear thy words, but 
they will not do them. * * * Thou art unto them as 
a very lovely song of one that hath a pleasant voice, 
and can play well on an instrument: for they hear thy 
words, but they do them not.” The masses of people 
were very much like Saul, who wished for Samuel in 
the time of disaster. They had no power of taking 
hold of spirituality. They tried to turn, but they could 
not break the hard grip of secularity. But there were 
enough people to serve as a remnant, and so there 
comes some of his best teaching. 

I wish I had time to dwell upon it. For one of the 
things that will strike you, read, for example, the 
thirty-third chapter. Just see his consciousness of in- 
dividuality, which stands over in striking contrast to 
the comparative absence of that in the earlier prophetic 
teaching. Prior to the exile the individual Jew got his 
value from his relation to the state. In thinking, he 
always thought from the state to himself. Now God 
had destroyed the state and he was a man without a 
country, a man without a home, a man who had ‘no 
political rights, a man who had no economic privileges, 
a man who had no money and no temple. He was 
thrown upon himself to find in his own thought and 
faith an inward sanction that would sustain and encour- 
age him in the day of the great disaster. They began 
to say: “ Ah, yes, our fathers have eaten sour grapes, 
and our teeth are set on edge. We are in captivity and 
have lost our state and our home because of our fathers’ 
sins.” ‘Then the prophet said: “ No, no; the soul that 
sinneth it shall die. The righteousness of the righteous 
shall save the righteous, and the sinfulness of the sinful 


188 STRAINS OF OLD EXPERIENCES 


shall destroy the sinful.” That old proverb about sour — 
grapes was no longer to be current in Israel. ‘They had — 
reached the stage of individual consciousness. y 
Now that did not take place among the Greeks, the 
most enlightened pagan nation, until the end of the ~ 
century. It gradually crept into the speculations of — 


the Sophists, but it was not there clearly until the period q 


of Socrates and Plato,—that conception of individual 
responsibility and right. It came to the masses by the 
same means, for at the end of the period, a century — 
later, when Alexander the Great had destroyed the city 
state, the Greeks were thrown back upon themselves to | 
find sanctions of a spiritual kind which they had ~ 
formerly gained from the state. So it is in the Book ~ 
of Ezekiel. When you come into the post-exilic period 
you have a sense of individual life, duty and desire that 
you could not have had without that purging discipline. — 

A second very striking thing is the spiritual concep- 


tion of the Church. That is beautifully illustrated in — 


the thirty-sixth chapter, in which there is a great prom- ~ 
ise. God says He will take away the heart of stone and 


give them a heart of flesh. It is the emphasis on the © 


spirituality of religion. Do you know the Book of the ~ 
Covenant in Jeremiah? It is like a diamond in a fine — 


setting. It is the loveliest thing in the book, apart from _ 


the man himself. Well, here it is more rich and beau- 
tiful in Ezekiel. ‘I will take away the heart of stone, 
all of your pessimism and your sin, and give you a — 
heart of flesh, a heart of a little child that can believe 
and hope and yearn and love.” q 

Then there is the revival of spiritual hope i in the — 
vision of the valley of dry bones. What a vision that — 
was! That is a challenge to Christianity as it was to — 
Judaism: “ Shall the dead live?” ‘‘ How can a man be 


eee 





PROPHET OF VISIONS 189 


born again when he is old?’ How can I be changed 
when my habits are fixed, when my youth is gone? 
How can I be changed when all my desires are stained? 
There is no answer but the grace of God. In this case, 
life came from the word of God, communicated through 
His prophet Ezekiel. 

But the finest thing of all was the vision of the power 
given to the Church for carrying out the Divine will. 
That is in the forty-seventh chapter. Ezekiel goes in 
vision to the Temple. You know the ‘Temple was 
situated on a sharp spur, and towards the east, with 
almost precipitous descent, a gash went down to the 
depths of the Jordan Valley. Just south and east of it 
was the Dead Sea. A more desolate and discouraging 
spot perhaps could not be found on this planet. ‘There 
was a Ititle stream bed, the Kedron, that started near 
the door of the Temple and ran down a great brown 
gash into the valley. No plants lived beside it; no trees 
grew on its banks. As you followed it, it became more 
and more desolate. 

One day, Ezekiel in vision was walking about on the 
mountain. He came to the door of the Temple. He 
saw running out from under it a little stream. He 
watched it as it ran down and emptied into the stream 
bed of the Kedron. Suddenly it was deep enough to 
cover the ankles; then it was deep enough to reach the 
knees ; then it came up to the loins. Before he knew it, 
there was water enough for swimming. As it flowed 
along the water touched the dry valley and life sprang 
up. There was fresh green grass, trees sprang up on 
its banks, and the stream went rushing down in tor- 
rential fashion and emptied into the Dead Sea. What- 
ever it touched it changed, transformed, and as it leaped 
in all its fury into the very heart of the Dead Sea the 


190 STRAINS OF OLD EXPERIENCES 


water became sweet and swarmed with fish. "That was 


God’s way of telling him that the stream that makes — 
glad the city of God would rise in the Temple of the ~ 
Jewish Church and flow out through the arid waste — 
places of the world until the desert should bloom as the ~ 
rose, until the wilderness should become a great forest. — 

Follow that in your imagination. What can we do © 
even today in understanding Christianity, without that ~ 
conception? Light comes from that temple, the light — 
of the law of God. What was the function of the Law ~ 
of Moses? It had a twofold function. It was a diag- — 
nostician and healer. It gave the diagnosis of the — 
world’s trouble and pointed the way to the world’s ~ 
Physician. ‘The best definition of sin outside of Scrip- 
ture is that in the Shorter Catechism, “ Sin is any want — 
of conformity unto, or transgression of, the law of ~ 
God.”’ There you have a precise description of the — 
function of the Jewish law with respect to its power ~ 
to diagnose the world’s trouble. Here are the ethical, ~ 
moral and intellectual desires of mankind running at ~ 
cross-purposes. Your way is just as good as mine, and © 
mine is just as good as yours, because we have no © 
standard. Then God comes along and throws the true © 
light through it all. Then you and I see what sin is. It 


is transgression of the law of God. 


Then God gives character standards. Here they all — 
are, the Greek with his standard, the Assyrian with his, © 
the Babylonian with his, and the Egyptian with his. — 
But God drops His plumb line down and every one of — 
them is out of plumb. ‘That is what we get out of © 
Moses’ law. You cannot understand sin, especially the — 
New Testament doctrine of sin, until you grip that. 
Then there was the ceremonial implication of the law: | 
its types and sacrifices, its day of atonement,—all of — 





PROPHET OF VISIONS 191 


which is so fully described in the Galatian epistle, where 
it speaks of the law as bringing us to Christ, just as the 
schoolmaster. The Greek pedagogue was not a teacher. 
He was an attendance officer. It was his business to 
find the child and bring him to the teacher to be taught. 

I remember the old Negro mammy who used to take 
me to school. I can almost hear her say: “ Come along, 
honey. It is time to go.” And then we would go 
across the fields, and I can recall how in my childish 
fancy I imagined I could see strange eyes looking at me 
from the shrubs. Then later she would come again and 
take me home from school. She could take me to the 
teacher but she could not read a line. The law is the 
schoolmaster to bring us to Christ that we may be 
saved. 

And that was in Ezekiel. See how it breaks out. 
Take the history of:the idea from Ezekiel’s time to the 
advent of Christ. After Ezekiel came the second part 
of Isaiah, those last great chapters. Now whether you 
hold to the Deutero-Isaiah position, or whether you 
hold to the unity of the book you have the same his- 
torical situation. The building of the Church is on the 
old foundation. You have the rise of that spiritual 
body and the corrupt tendencies which later produced 
Phariseeism and Sadduceeism, which, in the time of 
our Lord, were responsible for the failure of the Jewish 
people. But in the very center you have what the New 
Testament called “the devout in Israel,’ who waited 
for the consolation of Israel. You hear Simeon say, 
“ Now lettest thou thy servant depart in peace, * * * 
for mine eyes have seen thy salvation.” There was 
Anna the prophetess. There were Zechariah and 
Elisabeth, the parents of John the Baptist; that shy, 
delicate girl who was the mother of our Lord; and 


192 STRAINS OF OLD EXPERIENCES 


Nathanael who sat under the fig tree, who were looking 
for the coming Lord. ‘They were people who were true 
to the spiritual implications of the great promises of 
Ezekiel. 

Then pass on to the founding of the kingdom, to the 
Life, Death and Resurrection of our Saviour. Then 
follow the evangelical stream in the apostolic Church. 
There is the story of the Jerusalem period, a period of 
beginnings. ‘Then there is the Antiochene period, a 
period of transition, and, finally, there is the Roman 
period, which is the period of culmination, until Chris- 
tianity has spread over the known world. 

The purity of that stream was threatened, on the one 
hand, by pagan accretions, and, on the other, by 
monasticism and ecclesiasticism, until the rise of cor- 
rupt Romanism, which, at the time of the Reformation, 
swept the Church through a period of: purification, at 
which time the Bible was restored as the source of 
authority and Christ’s atoning Cross reaffirmed as the 
gracious basis of salvation. 

And now in these latter days, it is represented by the 


growing power of evangelical religion, the expanding — 


power of the missinoary enterprise and the closer fel- 
lowship of the churches, until sectarianism is disappear- 
ing and all divisive things are being relegated to the 
rear. Fundamentals are seen more and more clearly, 
and the commanding influence of the historic Saviour 
is becoming the one great thought of our age. ‘That 
stream is flowing broader and deeper today than ever 
before. Nothing can stop it. Each generation falls 
heir to the glories of the past, for what God builds God 
always completes. Happy indeed ought we to be, if we 
can take our share in this heritage and give it unto 
the world! 





XIV 
THE HIGHER EGOTISM 


“And I said, Should such a man as I flee?” 
—NEHEMIAH 6:11. 


F we are to appreciate the power of these words, 
we must know-something of the historical features 
of the period to which the book of Nehemiah be- 

longs. It was the epoch of Jewish re-establishment in 
Palestine at the close of the Babylonian exile. That 
momentous spiritual pilgrimage, fraught with such 
consequences for the human race, developed into three 
movements belonging to different times, and directed 
by able men who have left their mark upon Hebrew 
history. 

Not all Jews of the exile returned to Jerusalem. 
They had enjoyed certain privileges; many were pros- 
perous merchants and traders; others had become 
distinctly cosmopolitan, and preferred to remain in a 
foreign land. Some, too, had practically abandoned 
the religious aspirations of their race, and were to all 
intents assimilated to the heathen population. 

But the spiritual remnant, often referred to by the 
prophets, eagerly embraced the opportunity of return- 
ing to the old land, so soon as the conquest of Babylon 
by Cyrus opened the way. ‘This exodus is described 
in Scripture under a religious, an ecclesiastical and a 
political aspect. : 

The religious expedition left Babylon for Jerusalem 


193 


194 STRAINS OF OLD EXPERIENCES 


in 537 B. c., under the lead of Zerubbabel and Joshua 
the high priest. Their primary object was not to re- 
build the city or organise a government, but to refound 
the racial religion on the ancient base. Their principal 
task was to rebuild the temple; and this work was ac- 
complished under many difficulties. But so soon as 
finished a new problem arose, that of religious instruc- 
tion. Their sacred books were lost; theological schol- 
ars were few; their prophets for the most part practical 
and unimaginative men; or even where their imagina- 
tion touched the problem, it was apocalyptic in char- — 
acter, as we see in the prophecies of Zechariah. They 
were facing the problem of intensifying the spiritual 
life of the people under the most undramatic conditions, 
and the especial need was for regular instruction in the 
Word of God. 

To meet this need a second expedition set out Event 


Babylon under the lead of Ezra the scribe. This was , 


in 458 B. c. His object was to put the Word of God 


into shape for regular instruction of the people, so that ~ q 


they might become informed as to the spiritual nature 
of religion and the meaning of the covenant promises. 
But Ezra faced two great difficulties. The first was in- 
ternal. ‘wo tendencies had developed among the Jews 
on foreign soil, and were destined for centuries to 
trouble the religious adventure in Palestine: one was a 
separatist tendency, the other a secular tendency; one 
desired to preserve racial purity and proposed that the 
nation should devote itself exclusively to its religious 
destiny; the other desired more liberal relations, with 
other nations, and was ambitious to resume the role of 
political adventure. These tendencies eventually devel- 
oped distinct parties, which towards the close of the 
second century B. C. bore the names of Sadducees and 





HIGHER EGOTISM 195 


Pharisees. The former were secularists, the latter 
separatists. 

The secularists were diplomats, politicians and often 
men of liberal culture; they desired more intimate rela- 
tions with other nations; and many of them were 
among the most prosperous merchants, who were wil- 
ling to remain in the land of captivity. They had great 
influence among the returned exiles and Ezra realised 
immediately the necessity of checking it, if their spir- 
itual aims were to be realised. The other difficulty was 
external; in the pernicious activity of the Samaritans. 
This mongrel race desired to have closer relations with 
pure-blooded Jews, and found a willing ally in the 
secular party. It was soon evident to Ezra and his 
associates that unless this outside influence could be 
checked, no prospect of success could be entertained. 
Jerusalem from a political and military point of view 
was little more than a dump. ‘The people possessed 
neither military nor political ability. What they 
needed, in addition to priests and prophets, were able 
leaders, men of worldly wisdom, who knew how to take 
hold of a tough job and put it through. 

So it came about fourteen years later that Nehemiah 
led a third expedition to Jerusalem, with the specific 
purpose of organising a government, rebuilding the city 
walls, providing for adequate defense, and generally for 
the purpose of tranquilising the internal life of the 
people, in order that the religious and ecclesiastical 
authorities could carry out their work. 

The memoirs of Nehemiah tell us how that’ work 
was done. Now literature is of many kinds. We have, 
for example, the ambitious literary epistle, like those 
of the younger Pliny, written with an eye on the public 
and the future; then we have familiar letters, like those / 


196 STRAINS OF OLD EXPERIENCES 


of Paul, or James Howell, written to intimates, and 
with no desire to excel in a literary sense. Then we 
have the fascinating form of literary expression called 
the diary, wherein a man communes with himself. The 
memoirs of Nehemiah are in a very real sense a man’s 
self-communings. In his old age he lives over again 
the great days of his prime. I like to think the book 
originated in this way. When the man’s course was 
nearly run and his old mind was crowded with the 
accumulations of the past, he sits down to live over 
again the great days of his career. 


Now we can understand why for the comprehension — 


of this book it is so essential to know the man behind 
it. The important thing is not what the man said but 
what he did, and what the doing of it reveals of his 
character and personal force. There is no book where 
the personal pronoun “I” so dominates the story. 


Superficial people upon reading it say, “ How ego- 


tistical this is.’ Yes, it is egotistical, but it is the 


higher egotism, without which no great work was ever 


done. Nehemiah was not a priest, nor an ecclesiastic, 
but a layman; and before we have done with him, I 
hope we shall regard him as a very rare layman—a 
layman who knew his limitations. He did not go to 
Jerusalem to teach religion, for he well knew that other 
men were better fitted for this than he. He did not 
undertake a priest’s functions; he was not anxious to 
be the whole show himself, as is the manner of some 
among us today. He went to Jerusalem for the specific 
purpose of rebuilding the walls, organising a govern- 
ment and tranquilising the people, in order that the 
religious and ecclesiastical authorities might realise 
their aims. He knew that was a secondary role; a 
means to an end; he knew that so soon as his work 


ie 


2 | 


A 


HIGHER EGOTISM 197 


was done he must sink into the background and let 
others do their work; but he was content to have it so. 

George Eliot said of Savonarola, “‘ No man ever had 
a commanding influence over others who did not have 
in him the impulse to dominate, and this impulse has 
usually been the more imperious, as the complications 
of life tend to make self inseparable from an end that 
is not selfish.” That is what I mean by the higher 
egotism. It is never wrong for a man to put his whole 
self into his work. You must get to the point where 
your personality is identified with your work. They 
are not two things, but one; to speak of your work is to 
speak of yourself; to speak of yourself is to speak of 
your work. That which makes it right or wrong is the 
end. Is it selfish or unselfish? It is true that Nehe- 
miah often speaks of himself, but then he was the life 
and center of a great movement; in spite of which you 
are aware of his modesty, his humility. You can never 
feel that he is telling the story for his own glory; what 
he cares for is that he may do his work well. 

In passing let me say a word about biography. 
When we are young, we like romance, fiction and poetry 
of acertain sort. We often have moods Byronic; that 
desperate romantic pessimism of youth. We pass out 
of this into a speculative period; we talk much of the 
philosophy of life without clearly knowing what we 
mean; and then when we mature, when facts mean more 
than visions, and realities bulk larger than dreams, we 
find our greatest satisfaction in reading history; we 
begin to look about for men who have lived as we have; 
and in our search for sympathy, for understanding, for 
companionship, we turn to biography. That is why we 
turn to these men God used in other times, who stretch 
their hands across the centuries ; who come in the quiet 


198 STRAINS OF OLD EXPERIENCES 


of the night and sit round us and tell us to run our race 
with patience. Many a time at midnight, when the city 
is still, the lights turned low and there is a mystic sug- 
gestiveness in the dying glow of the fire, these strong 
earnest faces peer at me out of the shadows—Jeremiah, 
Hosea, Nehemiah—I know that I am not alone, but 
_ working side by side with them in serving the same 
great God. 

How, then, can we get in touch with the personality 
of such a man? You will not get it by the ordinary 
method of Bible reading. We must remember that God 
honours an earnest mind, a mind not afraid of hard, 
patient work, and that most difficult of all mental 
labours, brooding upon the inner meaning of things. I 


think much of our Bible study is worse than foolish; it © 


leads to nothing but drivel—the worse sort of drivel. 
There is no possible substitute for hard thinking. I 


care not how much you believe in the inspiration of a | 


devout life, there is no escape from digging at the roots 
of things, if we expect to know the mind and message 
of God’s servants. And when you dig, think it 


through. If you wish to get on familiar terms with 


these great men you must patiently work for it; dig 
down until you touch their spirit, and I venture to say 


it will set your heart aglow with such joy and peace as ~ 


you have never known before. This is the only way 
to know Nehemiah. 


The thirteenth chapter furnishes many striking illus- _ 


trations of the vigour of the man. There was a certain 
Tobiah, a Samaritan diplomat who took advantage ‘of 
Nehemiah’s absence in Babylon to get on the soft side 
of the chuckleheaded old priest in charge of the temple ; 
and actually succeeded in setting up a Samaritan lobby 
in the house of God. Nehemiah remarking upon this 





HIGHER EGOTISM 199 


unspeakable thing says, “ But all this time was not I at 
Jerusalem.’ When Nehemiah returned there was a 
great to-do. He cast out Tobiah and all his fine furni- 
ture into the streets, and had the chamber fumigated. 
Another time, some disregarded the Sabbath regula- 
tions he caused to be promulgated. Vagrant Samari- 
tans and a miscellaneous set of nobodies having no 
respect for Sabbath observances used to prowl about 
the town. They would come down to the gates of the 
city and say, “ Here is a bargain in fish: prices are 
down today.’ Nehemiah published an order against 
this, and naively remarks, “‘ After this they came down 
to the gate, once or twice.’ ‘Then there was the matter 
of mixed marriages; this was the terrible danger con- 
fronting the exiles: How could they hope to be faithful 
to their spiritual destiny, if the race was corrupted by 
alien blood? What was the practical trouble here? 
Simply that Jewish boys, having no regard for the 
spiritual aims of their people, were making sheep’s 
eyes at Samaritan girls: things were getting terribly 
mixed. Nehemiah knew perfectly well that this thing 
had to be stopped; this marriage of Jew and Samari- 
tan was producing a sort of Brunswick stew of 
races, whicl would utterly defeat the spiritual aim of 
the Jew; so he promulgated an order against it, and 
when it was disregarded, he took some of the am- 
bitious bridegrooms by the hair and banged their 
heads together and threatened them with severe pun- 
ishment if they did not observe the law. On another 
occasion a certain son-in-law of Sanballat was making 
free use of the town, in utter disregard of the laws; 
one day Nehemiah met him in the street, and remarks 
with characteristic logic “therefore I chased him 
from me.” 


200 STRAINS OF OLD EXPERIENCES 


These expressions of a virile personality must be 
considered in connection with his prayer life. His 
formula for prayer was. “ Now therefore, O God, 
strengthen my hands.” He did not ask the Lord to 
strengthen the other fellow’s arm, as the manner of 
some is; but rather that he might strike at evils with 
the power of a fixed and divinely supported purpose. 
He was always praying that he might be made a ham- 
mer to put the fear of God into Jewish hearts. The 
times called for such a man, and God did not withhold 
His favour. 

Nehemiah was a man of ideals. What is an ideal? 
It is just a pattern idea, a picture of what you wish to 
be, just this and nothing more. The possession of an 
ideal is no more likely to equip a man with power than 
the possession of a picture makes a man a painter; but 
it does help to concentrate effort upon a given object; 


for out of such dreams come visions of a career. Nehe- - 


miah was a young man, and therefore he had ideals. 
He must have been a beautiful lad, for he was one of 


the king’s cupbearers, and Oriental monarchs would not | 
have any but beautiful persons about them. No man 


wearing sackcloth was allowed to enter their presence. 
Nehemiah was cupbearer to the king, and enjoyed as 


was his right the luxury and magnificence of an East- - 


ern court. But with all this I do not think he was 
happy; deep down in his heart he wanted something 
more, something conformable to an honourable career; 
here he was but an upper servant, an entertainer; but 
his strong spirit called for nobler deeds. He would not 
always live a paddock life, like a prize pig at a country 


fair, a mere ornament, a part of the scenery of life. He — 


wanted, vaguely, it is true, but Seay to take his part 
in the world’s work. 





~ 


HIGHER EGOTISM 201 


Now to such a man opportunity always comes, but 
often, as here, in the garments of poverty and need. 
One day in the streets he met a ragged old man, and 
said to him, “ Are you not a Jew?” 

“ Yes, I am.” 

“ Well, what are you doing in this condition? ” 

“T have had an awful journey. I have been across 
the desert. [I am just from Jerusalem.” 

“ Well, how are things in the old land? ” 

“Oh, they are not getting on at all. The temple has 
been built, Ezra is doing his best with a bad situation, 
but the city is without proper military protection; its 
walls are down, there is no government and no order in 
the town, moreover, the Samaritans are incessant in 
trying to destroy the influence of religion. In fact, we 
have no leaders, no men of affairs. We need a ruler 
over there, but the people are discouraged and things 
could not be worse.” 

Nehemiah returned to his quarters. The story had 
reached his heart; it hurt him with a poignant pain; 
moreover, it rebuked him. Who was he to live at ease 
in a heathen court, when God’s people, his own flesh 
and blood, were in such dire straits? His grief found 
expression in prayer and penitence; and as he prayed, 
his mind cleared and he saw visions; he saw a way out 
of this ghastly smooth, paddock life, and said to him- 
self, “ This is my chance.” His hour of duty with the 
king came to relieve his vigil; but so soon as he en- 
tered into the royal presence the king noticed his 
sobriety and said: “ What’s the matter with you? I 
like not these sour faces.”” And Nehemiah replied, “I 
have a sorrow.” 

“What sorrow?” 


*““T have heard a tale of my people in Jerusalem that 


ew. 


202 STRAINS OF OLD EXPERIENCES 


strangely moves me; a man from my country tells me 
that they are failing for want of a leader.”’ 

“ Well, what yould you like? ”’ 

“TI should like to go over there and organise the 
government and rebuild the walls of the city and help 
my people realise their religious ambitions.” And the 
king said, “ Go, and I will back you up.” 


What led Nehemiah to make this momentous de-— 


cision? Four things, the first of which I have men- 
tioned—that is, his discontent with an idle life in the 
king’s court. What is the use of being rich and well 
fed and clothed and belonging to high society, when 
your life is not counting in the world’s work? What 
is the use of living in an atmosphere of unreality, when 
here is an open door into the broad spaces of the world, 
into strife, into life? That was one thing. Another 
was his sympathy for those in distress, beautiful, quick 


sympathy of the clean heart of youth. And then, too, 
there was a Scotch-like sort of patriotism, a love of a 


land he had never seen, his homeland, the cradle of his 
race and religion. Who has loved the brown soil, like 


the ancient Jews? “If I forget thee, O Jerusalem, let __ 


my right hand.forget her cunning.” The folklore of 
this people, their poetry, their romance, cling to the 
heart like their wild trailing vines. But above all else, 


gathering up and concentrating the elements of his fine — 


nature, was his determination to be a certain sort of 
man: not an idler in a king’s court, but some day and 


in some fashion to carve out a career for himself. It— 


had lain long in his young heart, vague, mysterious, in- 
choate; but this old Jew’s story had given it clarity. 


He saw duty plainly, he felt its attraction; and was — a 
most fortunate in having a kingly friend who would | 


encourage him in carrying it into actual performance. 





Sp 


PY ah dg hacia 


Ra 
eS 


Pate . be ia al oa F ” 
ESR) asstioen ip Sam ee ecg eet 
2 aia : a ee — ae 


HIGHER EGOTISM 203 


We now approach the most important feature of his 
career; I mean the testing of his ideals and aims. 
Much of the preaching I have heard in recent years has 
had much to say of the importance of ideals, but little 
of the tremendous necessity of testing them in actual 
experience. The mere contemplation of a fine thing is 
without value; it must be achieved. The test of a man 
is not that he will accept a call to a great work that is a 
long way off; but how will that man behave when he 
gets into the midst of it; when he confronts its exasper- 
ating details, its undramatic tasks. Will he continue to 
believe it a great work, when the romance and novelty 
have left it a drab and dreary job? If he still believes 
it worth doing and does it, then he is a great man. 
And this is the test of many a preacher. 

Nehemiah’s ideal was tested in six different ways; 
and they are trials which confront every Christian 
worker in some form or another. The first came from 
the character of the work to be done. “If I forget 
thee, O Jerusalem, let my right hand forget her cun- 
ning.” But what was Jerusalem when he reached it? 
It was a dump, just a pile of broken rocks, a stretch of 
weeds overrun with wild beasts; a little country village 
on the top of a hill in a remote land. How dreary it 
must have seemed to one who had just come from the 
court of the king, in stately Babylon. That is where 
he had gone to do a great work. His job was to build 
a mud wall round an insignificant town. It did not 
seem worth while to the inhabitants; but this man had 
the power of taking unpromising materials and making 
something great out of them. 

What is originality? It is not doing something no- 
body has ever done before, but in doing a commonplace 
thing in an uncommon way. God has given us abun- 


204 STRAINS OF OLD EXPERIENCES 


dantly of these common things, it is our privilege to 
add an element of distinction from ourselves. God 
gave Nehemiah a brown hillside, a lot of mud and rock 
and commonplace folks. He mixed with it, unseen to 
the secular eye, a mighty spiritual purpose, and out of 
it Nehemiah made—Jerusalem. That was his first test. 

His second was the test of ridicule. The Samaritans, 
led by Sanballat, a resourceful rascal, ridiculed his ef- 
forts. Of course they did not know the sort of man 
that had come to Jerusalem; and when they heard of 
his purpose they began to chuckle. ‘“ Why,” they said, 
when they saw all this activity in the sleepy town, all 
this laying of stone and measuring of land, “even if 
you finish the wall, a fox stumbling along in the dark- 
ness may run into it and it will fall down. We could 
knock it down without half trying.” This sort of talk 
came to the ears of Nehemiah, but he went on with 
the work. | 


Do you know that many of us fail, not from lack of | a 


talent or opportunity, but simply because we are not 
tough enough? We lack toughness of fiber and a 


saving sense of humour. We are afraid if we handle © i | 
rough problems we will hurt someone’s feelings. A 


friend of mine, a preacher, once complained that he 


was not making headway; and I remarked to him, “It 


is because you always wear kid gloves in the pulpit; 


get some knuckle dusters and go after, your people; q 
put the fear of God in their hearts, and they will take 
some notice of you.” He failed simply because he was _ 


not tough enough. Someone has said it makes a world 
of difference whether people laugh with you, or at you. 
A general of Napoleon’s army, a mighty doer in battle, 
once fell from his horse in parade, and the laughter of — 
the people broke his spirit. He was not tough enough. 





HIGHER EGOTISM 205 


Nehemiah had this toughness of fiber, because he was 
not an impressionist; he did not depend upon emotion 
for his stimulus to work; he was hard in the right way, 
because he had principles and convictions to sustain his 
purpose, and he could not be shaken from his course by 
this Samaritan laughter. 

Then came a test, sooner or later it comes to all, 
from discouraged associates. When this young fellow 
came over and told them what he was going to do 
everyone thought a good time had come. They were 
willing to aid him, so they brought out the old mat- 
tocks and axes and spades and said to him, “ Now, put 
us to work.” They kept at it like Trojans for a while, 
but after a time blisters came on their hands, backs 
began to ache, their eyes were sore, and their heads full 
of dust. They had been digging, it seemed, for years, 
and nothing had been accomplished. The ground was 
hard and the sun was hot: What difference did it all 
make anyway? ‘Then the old fellows laid aside their 
implements and began to talk, and this is what they 
said, “It never will be what it was in the old days: 
why, when I was a boy, etc., etc.”’ Nehemiah was an 
enthusiast, a hot-blooded young fellow: it did not make 
any difference whether the wall was built or not. Nehe- 
miah turned upon these discouraged associates, and not 
only resisted their complaining, but put his brave spirit 
into their flagging hearts. He understood human 
nature. 

The average man is not big enough to contemplate 
a great whole; the best he can do is to see one small 
section of life. This is where the preacher often fails: 
He tries to make his people see the whole circle; they 
can see only one small part of it, and that part is always 
directly in front of them, their own self-interest. 


206 STRAINS OF OLD EXPERIENCES 


Nehemiah did not talk about the spiritual purposes in- __ 
volved in the success of his scheme; he did not talk of 
building the wall as a whole, but said, “Let every man 
build the section of the wall immediately in front of 
his house.” Now Jacob on the west did not carea fig 
for what happened to Abraham living over on the east 
side of the town. But when he thought of the possi- 
bility of Samaritans coming down through the open % 
spaces right in front of his own dwelling, and carrying 4 
off his wife and possessions, he was tremendously in- & 
terested in building that wall. Nehemiah believed in 


local option. That is how he built the wall. 


Another test came from the heartlessness and greed ; is 


a = 


jae ~ 


iro 


~ 


of his neighbours in the town. These were the big 


business men who said among themselves, “This isa 
fine time to corner the food market.” So they got 


control of the corn supply, and while Nehemiah was 


working night and day to protect the town, these subtle 
rascals raised the price of food. The poor pawned 
their property, and then had to sell their children into 
slavery in order to get food. Nehemiah heard of it, 
and went straightway to the Board of Trade, Corn 

Exchange, or whatever place was used for such pur- 
poses ; assembled these captains of industry, and spoke 
unto them after this fashion, “ Stop this thing at once — 


or I will cut off your heads.” ‘There was no talk about — 


an investigation; or appointing a food dictator, or any 
commonplace suggestions for the delay of the public — 
business, but just this laconic word, “Stop it or die 

forthwith.” And they did it. They usually do,when 


a man like this is running things. That single illustra-_ 
tion shows finely the place of righteous indignation i in ; 


shaping public affairs. 


Then came the test of legitimate self-interest. Public — 





HIGHER, EGOTISM 207 


men often have to refuse what is lawful on grounds 
of expediency. It had been customary for former gov- 
ernors, who received no fixed salary, to reimburse 
themselves by taking presents from the people. It was 
an unwritten law in Nehemiah’s time, but fraught with 
dangers; for while the poor had little to give, the rich 
gave in abundance, with the result that they usually had 
their way. It is quite difficult to condemn the man 
whose bread you eat. But Nehemiah refused to abide 
by this custom, and served during his entire adminis- 
tration without pay; and the reason he gave, and it was 
a great one, “So did not I, because of the fear of 
God.” Nehemiah’s religion was practical; he valued 
his influence above his worldly interests. 

Then came a triple attack of craft. Sanballat, 
Tobiah and their followers got together and said, 
“This Nehemiah is a lad of parts, and we must get 
him into our power by craft.” The story is told in the 
sixth chapter and I think there was a merry twinkle in 
Nehemiah’s eye when he wrote it. They sent a mes- 
sage to him like this, ‘Come down into the plain of 
Ono, and let’s talk this thing over.” Now it is wise to 
talk over things that are not settled, but when once 
things are determined the time for talk is past. So 
Nehemiah refused point-blank to leave his work, prac- 
tically saying to his enemies, “ You very well know 
there is nothing to talk about, why, then, shall I leave 
my work to waste time in useless discussion?” ‘This 
is much needed in these days. Many of us think that 
going to church and prayer meeting and Bible classes, 
and generally enjoying our religious Epicureanism is 
an end in itself; it is not. All these things are means 
to a practical everyday sort of Christian living. And 
yet how many good causes have been literally talked to 


208 STRAINS OF OLD EXPERIENCES 


death: Assemblies, Synods, and conventions, move- z 
ments, sociological congresses and riotous revivals have 
used up the energy that should be going directly into 


the things that are settled, and are mies loudly to & 
be done. : 


O Lord, how long? When shall we rid ourselves of 
this convention habit, when shall we be freed from the 
wordy tyranny of these prophets of unworkable 
schemes, the ecclesiastical parasites who go up and }: } 
down the land telling other people how to do it, and 
who never by any chance do anything themselves? The 
Church must rid itself of this fussy habit, abandon the — 


worship of the god of statistics and crowds, and seek _ 


refreshment in the quiet places and among the eternal _ 


verities. 


Nehemiah would not waste time in discussing ques- s 
tions that were settled. The times called loudly for 
work, not talk; and the Samaritans knew this as well — 


as Nehemiah. So they came back at him and sought 
to frighten him with lying rumours. They sent a — 


servant “in like manner the fifth time with an open 
letter in his hand; wherein was written, It is reported 


among the heathen, and Gashmu saith it, that thou and — 


the Jews think to rebel ”—and, they might have added, 


we propose to see that this is communicated to the — 
Persian King. It is reported that Mrs. Jones was not 
in church last Sunday, and the poor preacher is very — 
much perplexed for fear he has hurt her feelings. It — 
is reported at the corner grocery, and John Smith saith — 
it: but who in the world is this John Smith? Who is — 
this Gashmu anyhow? Nobody ever heard of him © 
before he endorsed this portentous rumour. ‘There is 
an inscription, I think in Aberdeen University, like — 
this: “They say. What do they say? Let them say.” — 





HIGHER EGOTISM 209 


And thus Nehemiah answered them. What did this 
man, animated by the noblest aims, care for the chatter 
of a lot of Samaritan magpies? 

Then they said, “ We have one more arrow in our 
quiver.” And they got hold of a priest, a man of 
religion, and said to him: “Go and see what you can 
do with this fellow. Get him to take refuge in the 
temple and that will discredit his influence with the 
people.” They thought they had him then, for they 
knew Nehemiah’s great respect for religion and reli- 
gious ministers. So the priest came to Nehemiah one 
day and said something like this, “ My dear brother, 
you know how vitally important your life is to the suc- 
cess of our enterprises; it has come to my ears that 
there is a plot on against your life; even now you are 
in grave danger: come, take refuge with me in the 
temple until the storms are past.”” Nehemiah listened, 
and with a flash of that quick mind saw through it. I 
can see his eyes grow more and more piercing as they 
burned their way through that prinking little priest, 
and then pointing a finger of scorn he shot this word 
at him, “ Should such a man as I flee?” And you see 
the hypocritical messenger shrinking back into oblivion. 

It is a sad reflection that when the devil fails to find 
laymen to do his work, he always finds some priest or 
minister of religion to aid and abet him. During the 
Pazzi conspiracy in Florence, when certain enemies 
wished to be rid of Lorenzo de Medici, they hired a 
professional murderer to do the job. The original plan 
fell through, and it was then determined to carry it out 
in the cathedral and the signal for beginning the assas- 
sination was to be the elevation of the host, the most 
solemn moment in the Roman ritual. But the hireling 
refused to carry out the job. His reason was that “he 


210 STRAINS OF OLD EXPERIENCES 


did not mind killing Lorenzo, but he would not do it 
where Christ could see him.’’ So runs the frank old 
chronicle, “two priests who had no such scruples were 
found to undertake the task.” The devil seems to find 
it easy to get false ministers of religion to aid and help 


his cause. Many of the vile sex plays that now pollute 


the American stage, many of the novels which deliber- 
ately call evil, good, and good, evil, are written by 
renegade ministers, who have left the service of their 
Master to becloud the conscience and debauch the 
imagination of the long-suffering layman. | 


What was the secret of Nehemiah’s strength? Tt 


was his religion, his practical, everyday religion. He 
went to church, he prayed, he lived and he laboured as 
one who felt the eye of God upon him. The work he did 


was inspired at every step by his old-fashioned piety. 


And it is well to notice in closing that he was a very 
rare layman; a layman that knew his limitations. Let 
this sink into your minds. Good wall builders are not 
always safe interpreters of the law. At last the great 
day came. Nehemiah turns the task over to his associ- 
ate. The people are assembled and the law is being read, 
when Nehemiah notes the sad faces of the people: this 
will never do; running out on the platform he asks the 


reader of the law to pause a moment, and then says to 


the people, ‘‘ This is not a day for sadness and fasting, 
but of feasting and rejoicing, for the joy of the Lord 
is your strength.” ‘That is his secret, the joy of his 
religion. We need it and must have it if we are to be 
strong enough to break through the barriers of nation- 


ality, through the false restraints which hamper our 
church life, to the living, vibrant heart of humanity. — 


We need more of Nehemiah’s religion. If we had it 
we should have more of Nehemiah’s vitality. 


a =) ee fa 
a She em aS: 5. ee 





XV 
THE CAPTIVITY OF JOB 


“ The Lord turned the be Ade of Job, when he prayed 
for his friends.’—Jos 42: 


kinds of men. Some were workers; they wrought 

upon the world. Others were wrought upon by 
the world. Some had to do, others had to bear. Job 
belonged to the latter class. We do not so much see 
what Job is doing in the world, as what the world is 
doing to Job. 

The scene properly opens in Heaven. ‘The sons of 
God are all there and among them is Satan—the adver- 
sary and critic of life. The Lord thus addresses him: 
“Where have you been?” 

“Oh,” answers Satan, “I have been traveling up 
and down the earth and have seen many curious 
things.” 

_ “ What, then, are your impressions? ” 

“T have two; first, that there is no such thing on the 
earth as disinterested righteousness, and secondly, no 
man loves You for Yourself alone. Wherever I have 
been, I have found men are religious because it paid. 
They profess to love You because it is profitable.” 

This is still the point of view of the man of the 
world. Perhaps it expresses the belief of many who 
have lived beyond the romanticism of youth, and have 
had some of the experiences and compromises of mid- 

211 


I N revealing himself to the world God has used two 


212 STRAINS OF OLD EXPERIENCES 


dle age. It is not easy for such people to believe that 
anybody will sacrifice himself for an intangible end, 
unless there be some material advantage attached to it. 
This is the practical philosophy of mid-life when un- 
touched by the transforming grace of God. 


This sinister adversary stands for something in the 


human soul, the heart of man strangely resembles this 
scene in heaven. God is there, and there also is this. 
Satanic being with a plausible argument and a host of 
visible evidences on its side which seems to justify the 
belief that no man serves God for naught. Our human 
nature never votes unanimously on any proposition. 
Even in the earnest spirits there remains a minority 
which says, “‘ Deprive a man of the obvious and visible 
advantages of religion and he will cease to be good.” 


It is well to affirm at the outset that such an argument _ 


cannot be answered by argument, because what is im- 
mediate and tangible is usually on the wrong side of 
the debate. In this respect the man of the world has 
the better of the saint, because the obvious facts are in 
favour of the adversary’s point of view. The news- 


paper facts are always on his side. ‘The only convine- — | 


ing answer to this kind of argument is a demonstration 


in experience, and it is essential to that experience that 


it be from the point of view of the man himself, 


Job was not in heaven, neither was he aware of the 


debate concerning him, but down here on the homely 
earth, with his family and friends, his flocks and herds. 
And all the while the adversary in that inaccessible 
region was pointing to him and saying, “ That man’s 
religion is vain.” Job had no suspicion that his reli- 
gious life was to undergo a trial, when the Almighty 
gave his adversary permission to test his servant. The 
test ran through two stages. First came the loss of his 





CAPTIVITY OF JOB 213 


property. There came a day—a day that comes to 
most of us—when everything was changed. He lost 
his property and then his children. Yet in all these 
afflictions he failed not. The adversary was hard put 
to it. He was not so sure of himself, so he returned to 
heaven and the Lord said, “‘ How about it?” 

“Oh, he is still faithful, but he has not been hurt 
enough. Just touch his skin, make him suffer bodily 
pain and you will see how it is.” ‘Then the Lord said, 
“Go ahead, but do not kill him.”” So Satan touched 
him and he was covered with boils. There he sat, this 
brave-hearted man, in the ash-heap, troubled with many 
thoughts; and ever his faithful wife beside him. This 
seemed the worst thing that could happen, but he failed 
not. So far as the cynical scepticism of his adversary 
was concerned Job answered him in the only way by a 
demonstration within the sphere of experience. The 
man was stripped of every tangible good, yet remained 
faithful to God. 

But what the adversary could not do, Job’s friends 
came pretty near doing. Therein lies the extraordinary 
insight of this writer. It shows how well he under- 
stood human nature, and that our worst temptations 
come, not from Satanic but from human sources. 
Job’s friends came to see him. They were well mean- 
ing and deeply religious; and in the early stages very 
considerately stood beside him, and by their sympathy 
gave encouragement to the burdened spirit. I am sure 
Job appreciated their reticence. But when they began 
to talk, their sympathy dried up in the fierce heat of 
advocacy of their favourite point of view. 

_ These three men with the curious names were dog- 
matists. Now a dogmatist is a man who deals with 
unsupported assertions. He does not say to his op- 


214 STRAINS OF OLD EXPERIENCES 


ponent, “I am arguing with you,” but “I am telling 
you,” and if you disagree with the dogmatist that 
proves that you are not only wrong, but bad. We 
know the type and there is no institution that breeds 
them faster than the Church, unless it be a modern 
university. The dogmatist may be, and doubtless is, 


often a good man, but he is an astonishingly short- 


sighted man. : | 

As these excellent churchmen argued with their af- 
flicted. friend their peculiar points of view became 
obvious. Each was a dogmatist, but based his dog- 


matism upon a different thing. Eliphaz based his 
dogmatism upon a single experience. He had a dream 


one night, and a spirit passed before his face. He re- 
membered the day and the hour and the minute the 





A aad arn, 


~ 
* 


GRP te ERE RD AEG SLO RA ETE IE 


thing happened; and because of the one experience he 


could so vividly relate upon occasion in a testimony 


meeting, he jumped to the conclusion that he was ready. 
to settle any and all religious problems that arose. 
Such people are far too common in our work-a-day 
world. Many people attach more importance to the 
date and details of their conversion than to the fact that 
they are converted. They can recall with irritating pre- 
cision the very instant the thing happened, and with 


astonishing assumption imagine that they are capable: *: 


of explaining some of the most mysterious problems 
of life. 

The second of the trio was Bildad, and Bildad was 
a traditionalist. He was a veritable Sancho Panza 
for proverbs. He rarely opened his mouth without 
expelling some crystallised thought of past times; 


and so bespattered Job with worn-out phrases and_ 


wise sayings, and expects him to be convinced simply 
because he can talk so fluently. We know this tra- 





CAPTIVITY OF JOB 215. 


ditionalist type, a stickler for words who with most 
Jewish perversity believes that things are true be- 
cause they have attained the dignity of Proverbial 
Wisdom. 

And then there was Zophar. He was a dogmatist 
on a priort grounds. He professed to be so well ac- 
quainted with God (although with naive modesty he 
refrains from telling us how he obtained such knowl- 
edge) that he could predict what God would do in a 
given instance. He had reduced everything to a 
formula. Granted a given instance (Job with the 
calamities and the boils) all you have to do is to apply 
the infallible rule—and there you are! | 

All these gentlemen, with the very best intentions and 
in ways conforming to their favourite point of view, 
agreed on one thing, namely, that there was nothing 
mysterious about Job’s experience. Everybody knew 
that where there had been no sin there could be no 
calamity or suffering.’ Then with perfect consistency 
they put in the minor premise: Job suffers, therefore 
Job is a sinner. And to them it seemed that this was 
the end of the matter. God was on their side. Eliphaz 
said, “My judgment is just because I had my vision.” 
Bildad asserted that his judgment was in harmony with 
the theological opinion of all past times; while Zophar 
would insist that it is an @ priort axiom of religion that 
where there is no sin there can be no suffering. That 
seemed to settle the matter. 

Well, then, they would say to Job: “ The cure for 
your trouble is repentance; all you need to do is to con- 
fess your sin; perhaps you have been leading a double 
life; perhaps you have been beguiled into evil practices. 
Confess it and God will restore your property and 
health and everything will be as it was before.” All 


216 STRAINS OF OLD EXPERIENCES 


this seems quite easy, but then these gentlemen had 
no boils! 

In reply Job said something like this: “ I know what 
you mean. I ama sinner, I confess it, after the simili- 
tude of Adam’s transgression, for no man can be pure 
with the Most High. But you appear to think that my 
present suffering is due to some special form of sin. 
But I know this explanation is false. I do not under- 
stand my experience, but I am certain that your view 
is a mistaken one.” ‘Then, growing more excited as 
the dogmatist invariably does, they came back at him 
and summed up their opinion in some such words as 
these: ‘‘ Now to your other sins you are adding the 
vice of hypocrisy. We have always had some doubts 
about your piety, and we very much fear that our worst 
suspicions are about to be realised.” 

Now all the while this debate was going on a young ~ 
fellow by the name of Elihu was looking on and listen- 
ing; he got more and more interested until his nervous” 
system began to flutter. Finally he said: “I beg your 
pardon. I know I ought not to open my mouth in this 
august assembly, but I must have my say. I have a 
view of this thing; let me tell you what it is.” You 
can imagine these old gentlemen with a startled expres- 
sion on their faces turning toward the young man as he - 
began to speak. And he, too, proved to be a dogmatist. 
Most young men are. Yet his point of view was differ- 
ent from that of the others; more original and more 
daring. He based his dogmatism upon a false estimate 
of God’s majesty. He almost equals the Epicureans 
who placed their deities in a remote heaven, and made 
them indifferent to what goes on in this world. His — 
argument amounted to this: “ What is all this pother — 
about? He is the Almighty God, a Great God; why 





CAPTIVITY OF JOB 217 


should He Who is so majestic concern Himse:r with 
the petty experiences of such creatures as we are?” 
That is to say, because God is God, it is foolish for 
men to suppose that He is interested in their affairs. 
Elihu developed this argument at great length. God 
speaks to man in one way or another, but man regards 
it not. 

We do not know precisely when the book was writ- 
ten, but it appears to reflect the post-exilic point of 
view. Before the Babylonian exile there was very little 
consciousness among the Jews of what we should call 
individuality. A man gained his value from his rela- 
tion to a race or a state. The Jew attained his con- 
sciousness of individual importance somewhat earlier 
than the Greek. You find this in Ezekiel when he 
answered the proverbial statement current among the 
exiles, “Our fathers have eaten sour grapes, and our 
teeth are set on edge,” by saying, ‘‘ The soul that sin- 
neth, it shall die.” This passionate craving for per- 
sonal significance is one of the most pathetic and 
persistent forces in human nature. It is a great and 
terrible experience when a man is forced by his adversi- 
ties and afflictions to regard himself for the moment as 
distinct from the mass, until he feels that there are only 
two beings in the universe—God and himself. It was 
this insurgent sense of individual importance brought 
out most vividly in Job’s consciousness that made him 
aware of the stupendous mystery of the whole business. 
Yet Elihu ignored this, just as the others did. 

And Job is turned away from traditional views of 
religion to find an answer in his own convictions. I do 
not think a man becomes spiritually of age until some 
such process takes place in his soul. The point of view 
of the external people, of the traditionalists and con- 


218 STRAINS OF OLD EXPERIENCES 


fident gentlemen with a single experience, is thoroughly 
beside the mark. This wordy young man, so fascinated 
with his own verbiage that he dare tell Job there is no 
mystery in his life, is quite incapable of finding a solu- 
tion. What Satan could not do, these well-meaning 
friends came near doing. They misjudged Job. What 
troubled the man was not so much the fact that he did 
not understand his trial, as that his friends so confi- 
dently asserted that they did. 

He now begins to complain and someone will a 
“ How about his patience?” Well, what is patience? 
It is certainly an achievement, rather than a gift, and a 
slow achievement at that. Patience at any rate cannot 
mean the absence of complaint. It is rather a willing- 
ness to live faithfully in the face of a mystery that you 


cannot explain. The prophet Habakkuk faced a mys- 
terious experience, and what did he say?. “I will take — 


my stand on my watchtower, and see how God will 


answer my complaint.” That is patience, and Job had 


itin abundance. He did not understand his experience, 
but he is not disposed to find fault with God. He is 
even willing to wait and see; but his friends tried him 
sorely, because they. were in such a desperate hurry. 
Some questions require time for their settlement, and 


surely this is one of them. Job had to endure a great ‘ 


deal of hardness for a season in order to prove the 
reality of his righteousness; but the impatience of his 
friends came near breaking his spirit, because they 
faced him with three alternatives, and started reasoning 
processes that all but clouded his faith, 

The first of these alternatives was this: Renounce 


your integrity and accept a false view of God. That | 


was the view of his friends. “ You say you are honest 
and sincere. In this we believe you to be self-deceived. 


tahoe ae APIS =? > nae ees 





CAPTIVITY OF JOB 219 


The finest thing in your heart, that thing you call your _ 
integrity, is a lie. Renounce it forthwith. Go through 
a stereotyped process of repentance, accept our narrow 
view of God, take our traditional notion of religion, 
and everything will come out all right.” 

The second of these alternatives was “ Hold on to 
your faith in your integrity as against your friends; 
but do not look to it to sustain you; confess an unsolv- 
able mystery in your experience; recognise the vain 
hope of any subsequent solution; give up faith in God 
Whom you cannot understand and die.” That was the 
view of Job’s wife. 

The third alternative was—‘ Hold on to your integ- 
rity, and wait for an answer from God.” This was the 
view of his afflictions that he finally adopted. The first 
alternative we Have already discussed, but I want to 
‘say a word of the second and third. I wish to put in 
a plea for Job’s wife. She is one of the misunderstood 
women of the world, the favourite target of bachelor 
commentators. Some have even ventured to say that 
she was the agent of the devil, and have likened her to 
Xanthippe, the much maligned wife of Socrates. 
Many practically say that Job’s wife was in this in- 
stance the mouthpiece of Satan, and that her advice 
amounted to this: “ This God of yours, why not curse 
Him? Defy Him. Rouse His wrath and let Him slay 
you.” Can any reasonable person imagine a wife 
giving such advice as this? Job had the boils, but she 
had the husband with the boils, a greater affliction 
truly. Think of what she had lost! She shared in all 
the sufferings of her husband; her home and her chil- 
dren gone; yet she endured without complaint the whole 
of it. She was the biggest human help Job had. She 
never said, “ Curse God and die.” What she did say, 


220 STRAINS OF OLD EXPERIENCES 


if you read the story right, was, “‘ Renounce God and 
die.,” a very different matter. What she meant was 
this, “ Job, our view of religion has turned out to be 
wrong. We thought we understood God, but now we 
find He is an unsolvable mystery. Let us give it up. 
Weare leaning on a broken reed. There is nothing left 
to live for; our property is gone, our children are dead, 


you are sick and friendless. Let us abandon every- — 


thing and die.” 
In my judgment, the best commentary on Job is a 
series of illustrations made a century ago by William 


Blake. His treatment of Job’s wife is altogether satis- 
factory. Beside the patriarch in every illustration, save _ 


one, is this appealing little figure, sharing all his ex- 
periences and partaking of all his afflictions. The one 


picture from which she is absent shows Job looking 
over the rim of the world into the pit:of hell. She | 
could not go with him in this experience because she 


had not fallen from such a height. If you will care- 
fully read the poem you will see that God never blamed 
the woman. Job’s answer to his wife was character- 
istic: “ Shall we receive good from the hands of God 


and not evil? In your disturbed frame of mind you, 
talk as if you were one of the foolish women.”. If T 
were a woman I should not like to be the wife of a. 


great saint. This woman’s attitude is that of the av- 
erage Christian, and she is closer to us than Job him- 


self. Let us not be too ready to put labels on her, lest — 


haply we despise something in our own nature. Job 
never showed to better advantage than in his patience 
with his wife, and it was his steadfast faith that finally 
brought her up to the level of his vision. 


Job determined to hold hard by his integrity, the ‘@ 


finest thing he knew. Dogmatic people try to reduce 


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CAPTIVITY OF JOB 221 


human experience to measurable limits. ‘T’o them reli- 
gion and life are things that can be put up in a box and 
labeled. So thought Job’s friends. They believed you 
could take a line and measure the majesty of God, and 
they tried to take a human life and strip it of all mys- 
tery. The truth is that a life without mystery is a life 
without meaning. There can be no great faith without 
spacious atmospheres and lofty vistas. The life of 
faith is mystery, and the life of mystery is wonder, and 
without wonder there can be no worship. “ Open thou 
mine eyes,’ says a Psalmist, “that 1 may behold won- 
‘drous things out of thy law.” And in that very psalm 
he has said more than a hundred things about the law, 
yet felt the depth and mystery of what was beyond it. 
Thus felt Job as he fell back on his indestructible hope. 
He believed that somehow and sometime God would 
answer him, that. God would be on his side, that his 
integrity would be openly acknowledged. This consti- 
tuted Job’s captivity. 

Let us now see how God turned it. The process 
began in Job’s own reflections. Instead of turning 
sour and pessimistic, more than ever he looked into the 
depths of his consciousness, and came at last to realise 
the ultimate significance of his sufferings. He felt 
deeply and truly that God would meet him and answer 
him, and suddenly there broke into the sorrow of his 
mind the great truth, “I know that my redeemer liv- 
eth.”” Redeemer here means zvindicator. Job’s idea is 
that it may be here on homely earth, it may be yonder, 
worlds away, but eventually, whether he lives or dies, 
he will confront his Vindicator, Who will judge him 
righteous. From that moment the cynical adversary in 
the courts of heaven is driven from the field. He had 
said that no man was righteous for the sake of right- 


222 STRAINS OF OLD EXPERIENCES 


eousness; yet here was the very man he had selected 
actually saying that only the vindication of righteous- 
ness would content him. Thus Paul felt in the Roman 
prison when he wrote his last letter to Timothy : “ The 
time of my departure is at hand. * * * Henceforth 


there is laid up for me a crown of righteousness, which a 


the Lord, the righteous jurge, shall give me.” 

I think one of the most powerful arguments for the 
immortality of the soul is found in this fact. If man 
were mortal there is no solution of Job’s problem, for 
it is a problem of the suffering of the righteous. I can 
understand why the wicked should suffer, but I tell you 
the more I see of life the keener is my feeling that 
the unmerited suffering of good people requires an 
explanation. They are rarely if ever adequately ex- 
plained in this life. It is not the fact of suffering that 
breaks down a man; but it is suffering without meaning 
or apparent object that a is the cross which no man can 
bear. But once grant that earthly experience opens 
out upon an eternal world, that the sufferings of the 
righteous are part of the plan of God for the per- 


fection of His kingdom, and I think we may well be © & 


content to wait patiently. Only goodness that is un- 


adorned is seen to be self-sufficing. Clothe it with ever — 4 


so little of this world’s riches, and men will still doubt 


its reality; but once strip it of all external support and — a 


let it remain goodness, and men will believe in it. That 
is why there is so much pain in the world: 


“Ts st for nothing we grow old and weak, 
We whom God loves? When pain ends, gain 
ends too.” 


I think when life’s fretful fever is over we shall find 
that the road to intimacy with God lay through this old, 





CAPTIVITY OF JOB 223 


undramatic, gainful way of pain. That is why God 
Himself came to us not with argument but in an ex- 
perience; not through barren philosophy, but by incar- 
nation. He Himself has suffered, and through His 
pain we are made alive. Job did not know this, but he 
was on the road to its comprehension, and thus his 
lonely figure reached across the centuries and made 
itself familiar with Gethsemane and Calvary. 

This is what the Epistle to the Hebrews calls faith. 
“ Without faith it is impossible to please God.” Why? 
Because faith means loyalty. It means steadfastness 
under conditions the most trying and frequently mys- 
terious. Without faith of this sort it is impossible to 
understand God. Amiel has well said that “ God is the 
Great Misunderstood.” He could not tell Job his ex- 
perience was a trial. The mystery of it was essential 
to its reality. To have told Job what was taking place 
in heaven would have reduced the whole experience to 
absurdity ; but we know what was taking place there. 
The adversary was completely routed, not by an argu- 
ment, but by an experience. 

While this process of reflection was going on Job’s 
mind began to clear. Then something happened. God 
spoke to him. Notice particularly what God said. He 
did not try to explain the trial, neither did He inform 
Job concerning the debate which had been going on in 
the courts of heaven. Still less did He say to his 
much-tried servant, ““ Now that you have endured enter 
at once into your reward.”’ What God did for Job was 
to deepen the mystery of his experience. He prac- 
tically said to him, “‘ Who are you anyhow to darken 
counsel with words? Where were you when I made 
the worlds and hung the stars in the sky?” In our 
deeper moments we become aware of a greater, more 


224 STRAINS OF OLD EXPERIENCES 


awful mystery within ourselves than in all the external 
glories of the world, and so felt Job, for this Voice 
from the sky stirred him to the depths. I can see him 
turning towards the Voice, his old eyes glistening with 
tears, but his face illuminated with a new vision, and I 
hear him say in broken accents, “I heard of Thee by 
the hearing of the ear. I thought I understood Thee, 
for I believed in the traditions of my fathers, but now 
that mine eye seeth Thee, I abhor myself, and repent in 
dust and ashes.” That was a divine moment in the 
history of a soul, showing not only the greatness of 
God but the greatness of His servant also. 

For if God deepened the mystery of Job’s experience, 
remember He brought him up to the level of it, and 
that is just how anyone is made great. Why should we 
wish to get rid of the mystery that surrounds our lives? 
You and I could as easily live in a world without air 
as in a spiritual world without mystery. It is well for 
us sometimes to reflect on the unspeakable things in 
God’s relation to us, especially to stand before the 
Cross, to contemplate that Life and Death and Resur- 
rection, to visualise in spirit that stupendous Word of 
God, and wonder and wonder and wonder until one is 
overcome with silence and awe. This is to feel about 
the mystery of life that deeper and more tender mystery 
of the love that created it. 

In this fashion Job’s captivity was turned. Windows 
opened and he looked out upon a greater God, upon a 
Divine Being more in harmony with the requirements 
of his expanding personality. While indulging in such 
happy reflections Job bethought himself of the mistaken 
view of his friends. He desired that they should also 
share in his blessedness and straightway kindles a fire 
and offers prayer and sacrifice,’ and the Lord turned 





CAPTIVITY OF JOB 225 


the captivity of Job when he prayed for his friends.” 
Suddenly the clouds broke, the sun came out, and Job 
looked upon a world without a shadow. I believe the 
question put to us today differs very little from that 
of the cynical adversary, ‘Doth Job fear God for 
naught?’’ Are we Christians for what we can get out 
of it, or because we believe goodness is its own reward? 
I wonder how many of us love God for Himself alone? 
If we have learned to do this beyond all controversy, it 
has been the fruit of such experiences as are here de- 
scribed. Our poverty comes from our obvious riches; 
but our riches are to be found in the implications of our 
experience; so if going back to Job and learning how 
he solved his problem we can be brought a little closer 
to the comprehension of the mystery of grace, and 
understand why Christ forgot His agony and pain, and 
on the Cross prayed for His enemies, we shall have 
lighted on the secret of happiness—we shall enter into 
the blessed companionship of our Lord and our God. 


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